


Thanking Every Star in the Sky

by antigrav_vector



Series: (R)BB fics - all pairings [15]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Canon-Typical Injuries, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hurt Peggy Carter, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, IN SPACE!, Identity Porn, M/M, Mission Fic, Multi, Outer Space, Presumed Dead, Space Opera, all of the space tags, mishmash of characters from different eras all thrown together, rarepairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-01-30 19:54:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 23,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12660336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: The Howling Commandos have only recently been woken up from their 90 year naps, and learned that there's a new war against the Chitauri. Worse, they've learned that it's not the second war, but the fifth. Once they're back on their feet, they're given a small ship, and then assigned two new crew members: a fighter and his battlesuit mechanic. Steve isn't too pleased about this, at first. He's got his relationship with Peggy to try to sort out, and a new war to fight. He's got a team to lead and a suicide mission from SHIELD Director Fury to try to survive, somehow. He's not sure how yet. What he hasn't got is time to worry about team dynamics and possible interpersonal conflicts. He really should give the guys a chance. Steve knows that. But when the mechanic refuses to talk about his past, and the fighter doesn't give them a name or even show them his face... Well, Steve doesn't like that one bit.Of course, that just means that their new crew members have to go and surprise them all. Repeatedly.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2017 Marvel Big Bang, but partially inspired by a prompt I got for the 2016 CapIM Holiday Exchange - one of the last Stony events I took part in. This draws on some elements of [Le Ciel Attendra](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8784241), and adds in all the extra plot and relationship dimensions I couldn't use for a purely Stony event.
> 
> Chapters will be posting daily until the 17th, at which point the art will be added.
> 
> Note that there *is* smut. It is only in the very last chapter, but it's there.
> 
> Presented with thanks to my faithful beta reader [dapperanachronism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapperanachronism).

Looking out the radiation-hardened glasteel window of the bridge, Steve let his thoughts wander. There was no ship nearby, and for once he and his crew had drawn picket duty in one of the less hard-hit sectors. It was likely General-Admiral Fury Jr.'s idea of furlough.

The displays were all dark, save those over the nav station, leaving the area with an eerie feeling of emptiness despite the Howlies' presence aboard.

Steve sighed, the sound almost silent. The abandoned feeling was kind of fitting, for all that it made the empty seats seem more like gravestones. Testaments to lives lost aboard this ship.

It was the year 2954 AD, and humanity had long been steadily making their way farther and farther out into space. Mars had been colonised in the early 2200s, and Jupiter's moons in the 2550s. The first discovery of the wormholes predicted so long ago by Einstein's theorems had come about just over seven decades ago, as measured in corrected Standard Earth Time. Around the same time, the EVA suits used in asteroid mining had gotten hurriedly overhauled and pressed into service as battle armour in the first Chitauri war. They'd been clumsy, clunky things, and Steve remembered them well. He'd had to use one in his first tour with the Unified Earth Flotilla. 

That tour had ended abruptly. He and his team had managed to single handedly stop the influx of Chitauri into their sector of the solar system, but the resulting damage to their ship and the injuries that had resulted in, had landed all of them in stasis. Well, Steve had only found that part out later. He'd lost consciousness with a viciously vindictive feeling of victory running through him, secure in the knowledge that the Chitauri threat was dealt with. When his ship had been recovered, with everyone still aboard and miraculously alive, the General-Admiral he'd served with, Phillips, had seen to it that they had been taken care of as best the technology of the time could do it.

Phillips had called in a lot of favors to do that, too, to hear Fury Jr. tell it. But everything they'd tried had failed, and after a week, the decision had been made to put all of them on ice until some new tech came along that could repair the damage to their bodies.

They'd stayed that way until last month. A Dr. Helen Cho had been informed that her cutting edge medical technology was being 'borrowed' by the Flotilla -- who had apparently been funding its development quietly -- along with her services. She'd been discovered by Howard Stark just prior to his death and given a few years' funding. After Howard's death, the Flotilla had taken over, and given her a decade to perfect her system, which she called a Cradle, at which time she would be called on to defrost and heal the Commandos.

In the end, he and his team had been back on their feet in time to be called on to serve in what he'd found out was not the second Chitauri war, but the _fifth_. Phillips had been succeeded by Fury Sr. And he, in turn, had handed the reins to his son. In those intervening 90 years, there had been three wars with the Chitauri, and not all of them had ended well, for all that humanity had won all of them so far. Everything about that single piece of information exhausted Steve to his very bones.

Once the team had more or less successfully gotten back on their collective feet, physically and mentally -- it turned out that being slabbed, as the techs called it, for nearly a century was very disorienting -- Director Fury had assigned them a small minesweeper class ship called the _U.S.S. Glory_.

It was one of the oldest ships in the SHIELD fleet, and it showed. The _Glory_ might once have lived up to her name, though Steve kind of doubted it, but now she was run down and all of her fittings were shabby. Even the white cotton sheets in the bunks were a bit threadbare. Her walls had once been painted white, but the grime that had accumulated over years of use had turned them beige and refused to come off. The dark grey floors with their anti-skid friction strips and linoleum-like flooring were cracked in places due to heavy wear but otherwise intact. Lines for the electrical systems, air, water, and waste ran along the ceilings of the corridors, tucked into the corner where ceiling met wall. The ship's navigation, life support, communications and weapons systems all worked fine, though, despite their age, and were compatible with the tech that the rest of the more modern SHIELD flotilla used. 

On the other hand, their age meant the systems were old enough that they still bore enough of a resemblance to what his team had been used to that they could adjust to the changes within a reasonable span of time. The navigation system was very similar, and the layout of the ship was, as well. The communications systems were a bit different; those had changed more drastically with time than the other systems. The placement of the bulkheads and the airlocks was identical though. There were four in the bulkheads that were used to seal off portions of the ship should there be a hull breach, in addition to the four that lead out-ship.

"Captain," a soft female voice rang out behind him as the bridge door of the _Glory_ hissed open, "is everything alright?"

Steve couldn't help the smile tugging at his lips at the interruption to his thoughts. His first mate seemed to have simply foregone the ability to say the wrong thing, as far as he was concerned. She'd always known just what he needed to hear, right from their first meeting.

"Everything's fine, Peg." He turned to face her, struck, as always, by her poise and grace. He'd have been the happiest man alive if she'd only have agreed to marry him, but circumstances had conspired against them in the last war they'd fought in, and with the reinstatement of their combat team that hadn't changed in this one. Something like that would not only go against all the fraternisation rules in the book, but would mean that they were no longer allowed to work in the same combat unit, and that was something Peggy refused categorically. "Just thinking."

She snorted, eyeing him. "I'd suspected as much. You're looking melancholy again. How many times need I remind you that trading the team for me is a terrible idea?"

"Until it sticks," Steve replied, long used to her ability to read him like a book. "Peg, we never exchanged formal promises, but we said after we finished the war -- the first war -- that we'd settle down."

"You can't." Peggy smiled at him sadly. "You know that as well as I do. I couldn't either. The fighting... It's stuck in your blood just as much as mine. We'd both be useless without a battle of some kind to fight, and would likely kill each other within a week. Not to mention the team. Would you really be able to leave them behind? We both know they've become family. No, Steve. Even if you're willing to sacrifice everything we've fought for, everything we've earned, everything we've paid for in blood and fallen comrades, for 'us', I am not."

Turning back to the window to hide the hurt that cut at him again at her renewed insistence on protocol, Steve said nothing for a long moment. "Did you need something?"

Peggy stepped up beside him and put her arm around his waist, hugging him to her tightly. "We're about to sit down to dinner. Come on. You'll need the calories if we're called on to fight. Gabe's already eaten and will take over for you while you refuel."

\------

Stepping into the _Glory_ 's galley was like taking a header into a pool of sound and color. His entire team -- save Gabe, him and Peggy -- was already seated around the long table laughing and ribbing one another. When they spotted him, they cheered.

"Finally!" Morita complained, "now that everyone's here, the rest of us can eat!"

"Ya know," Dumdum eyed him, "for a skinny fella you sure do eat a lot."

Steve watched them fondly. "Dugan," he put in, "shut up and eat your dinner."

"Yeah," Gabe nodded, mumbling through a mouthful of food, "unless you want to leave more for us while you flap your gums."

Peggy sniffed delicately. "It's like dealing with a group of children," she commented, sipping at her drink. "Not one of you has any sense or manners."

"Comment cela?" Dernier grinned at her. "Mes manières sont les plus sophistiquées de l'équipe."

"Captain," Falsworth took advantage of the slight pause that followed Dernier's comment to change the topic, his crisp accent belying his origin as always, "what's this we're hearing about Fury assigning someone new to our team?"

Steve scowled. This was a topic he and Fury had had words about just prior to their deployment on this quiet frontier, and not the politest words, either. "You heard right. We're getting assigned another fighter and a combination mechanic and techie, because we're still relatively new to the ship and her systems, but I have no intention of letting anyone strong-arm their way onto my team."

Falsworth shrugged. "Don't be too hasty in judging people by their reputations," he replied, his tone suggesting he knew he was hitting the nail squarely on the head.

Steve felt his expression darken. "Fury hasn't even given me a _name_ , Monty," he shot back. "This guy, code name Iron Man, could be anyone, and the only information on the net about him is a series of highly improbable tabloid and magazine articles about liaisons he's had with every attractive person alive, despite the fact that no one knows who's in the suit. I'm not inclined to trust blindly, and the lack of any kind of information is a big red flag."

Bucky, who'd carefully kept quiet until then, shrugged. "Give the guy a chance, Steve. If he's good enough for Fury to consider assigning him to us, he's probably got skills you've never heard of. Tech's changed a lot since we went under."

Peggy nodded, adding her support. "For once Barnes is being quite sensible."

Luckily for Steve's somewhat frayed nerves, the conversation shifted to less politically sensitive topics after that. When the meal was over, Peggy very firmly pointed him in the direction of his bunk with instructions to get some rest.

He was tempted to refuse, but given that they were retrieving their new member from the main SHIELD headquarters as soon as the coming nightwatch was over, Steve thought it better to give in and do as his SiC suggested.

If only so that dealing with Fury didn't end in a shouting match this time.


	2. Chapter 2

The following morning, Steve was very glad he'd opted for sleep.

Fury had shown up with the promised two guys, introducing them simply as Iron Man and his mechanic Tony. His team had made no move to protest, though, and Steve had settled for giving Fury his darkest glare. This was something he'd only grudgingly agreed to, since every foreign element Fury introduced onto his team was one more thing Steve would have to worry about and keep track of. Those were things he disliked dealing with on any standard mission, and this promised to be one with no guarantee of their survival.

The tension had held -- through the introductions, which his team handled more gracefully than Steve himself had, the very succinct and rather worrying suicide mission briefing Fury had deigned to give them, Fury's disappearance back into the bowels of the SHIELD complex, and the subsequent walk back through the large SHIELD facilities to the shipyards -- until they were aboard Steve's ship, seeming to crackle in the air.

"Look," Tony said, breaking the silence that seemed to ring in the air between them and turning abruptly to Steve. "I don't know what bug crawled up your ass, but I don't appreciate being treated like I'm a liability or a traitor before I've had a chance to do a goddamn thing. I may just be a mechanic, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you walk all over me. I'm not part of your chain of command, and neither is Iron Man."

Steve sputtered. Taking charge, Peggy snorted and offered Tony a hand to shake. "Well, at least you have a backbone," she quipped with a subtle smile. "Welcome aboard, Tony."

"Thanks," Tony retorted, "I think." Turning to gesture at the armour that towered over him, he added, "This ship got a workshop for me to fix him up in? He picked up some servo lag on the last mission Fury gave him."

"One of the empty cargo bays has been converted for your use," Peggy nodded. "This way."

Bucky put his hand on Steve's shoulder as the rest of them watched Peggy lead Tony and Iron Man down the corridor and out of sight. "Well," Bucky quipped, "that Tony's a spitfire. He might just fit in, after all. At least we got a man who works for an honest living, with that one."

"We still know nothing about Iron Man," Steve pointed out, realising belatedly that the man in the armour hadn't said a word throughout the exchange.

"Maybe so," Dum Dum said, "but something tells me that won't be the case for long."

\------

Later that night, long after the team and Tony had had dinner in the galley, Steve found himself back on the bridge staring out into space.

Peggy followed him, this time. She joined him in silence for a few minutes. When she spoke, it was to ask Steve the question he'd more or less expected. "Well, what do you think of them?"

"I should be asking you that," he pointed out.

A short silence fell, as she waited him out. Steve used it to consider his answer. "I don't know. Tony seems honest enough, but that doesn't mean he can handle himself in a fight. And Iron Man hasn't bothered to leave that workshop long enough to say five words to any of us."

Peggy made an amused sound. "You could always invite him to spar with you."

Steve made a face. "I doubt that would prove anything."

"I like Tony. He's got spirit." Peggy told him with a quirk of a smile that made Steve wish hard that she would reconsider breaking all the rules and going to bed with him. "Reminds me of someone else I once knew, long before the first war."

Setting those thoughts aside with a huff, Steve gave her a look. "What are you even talking about? I'm nothing like Tony."

She rolled her eyes at him. "I'm serious. A bit short, has a chip on his shoulder, ready to fight anyone that looks at him funny... And he's definitely got a very strong sense of what's right. Of the rules and how to deal with the law. Even if he doesn't always follow either."

Steve wasn't at all sure he agreed. "I'm going to reserve judgment for now."

"Sure."

Steve could tell by her tone that she didn't believe him for a moment. He'd learned how to pick his battles, though, where she was concerned. Tony would probably be a point they disagreed on for a while yet.

\------

The most irritating thing about Tony, Steve decided, was that after his discussion with Peggy he couldn't seem to disagree with her assessment anymore. Over the course of the next two day cycles, he'd started to see more than just hints of all the qualities she'd listed, along with a few others that made him want to throttle Tony. The man was more than just a mechanic. He was a damned workaholic. Every time Steve wanted to talk to him, he was working on one thing or another. Even during their meals, he'd started bringing a tablet and taking notes on what he needed or wanted to do next. Be it improvements to Iron Man's armour, the team's suits, their weapons, or anything else that came to mind.

The team had ribbed him for it the first time it had happened, but he'd huffed at them and simply threatened to withhold the upgrades he'd been designing at the time. Bucky, who'd been sitting next to him, had gotten a glance at said upgrades, and immediately yelled at the others to shut the fuck up about it.

All of them had listened, too. If Bucky wanted those upgrades, they had to be good.

Left to work in peace as the conversation flowed around him, Tony had smirked to himself in satisfaction, and gone on designing and tweaking, pausing occasionally to take a few bites of the food in front of him.

He didn't eat nearly enough, though.

And they never saw Iron Man at mealtimes, either.

That was mystifying. Peggy had been the one to broach the topic, but on hearing that Iron Man preferred to eat alone in the workshop due to having to maintain his secret identity, it had been Steve that had taken it on himself to start leaving him food in the workshop.

Bucky had laughed at him, but Steve was firmly of the opinion that if he didn't keep his team in fighting trim no one would. Peggy tried, and the majority of them listened, but Iron Man was new to the team, and didn't yet know the consequences of disobeying Peggy could be downright frightening. 

\------

"You know," Tony told him absently the next day cycle, "If you keep trying to stuff Iron Man so full of calories, he won't fit in his armour anymore."

Steve laughed at the mental image. "I doubt it. Do you have any idea how many calories it takes to keep a fighter in top shape?"

"Not nearly as many as you seem to think," Tony riposted. "Iron Man's fine. He doesn't need to eat for four. Two's enough. You might need those six thousand some odd calories a day, what with the way you seem to work out constantly, but he doesn't."

Conceding the point, Steve shrugged. "That's as may be, but we never see Iron Man at meals, and based on inventory, he doesn't eat enough."

Tony huffed at him. "You're a worse mother hen than-- well, than anyone else I know."

Steve wondered at the hesitation. What had Tony been about to say? Something that might give a clue as to his mysterious past? Steve filed the question away. It could wait. As could the nagging sense of familiarity that he felt anytime he looked at Tony. It was confusing. He shouldn't feel like he'd seen Tony before. He definitely couldn't have. There was no physical way that could be true. And yet, Steve just couldn't shake the feeling that he clearly had.

The whole thing was maddening in that vague kind of way that déjà-vu was, when you had no idea what your mind was trying to tell you.

When he refocused on Tony, the man was staring at him knowingly. "You back with me, Cap?"

Ruefully, Steve shrugged. "More or less. Just thinking. You reminded me of someone, but I couldn't pin down who."

Shaking his head, Tony looked at him in mock disappointment. "Your time on ice erode your memories?"

"No more so than your time down here has eroded your manners."

With a laugh, Tony turned back to what he was working on, and flicked at the holograms in front of him. "Anyway, as I was _trying_ to tell you," he said with deliberate emphasis, "I think I've found a way to get you back that shield you miss so much."

How Tony had found out about that, he didn't know. Steve stared at him, wondering just who had told Tony about that little quirk of his. "Go on."

With a smug smirk, Tony spun the hologram and started narrating. "Instead of the old alloy model you used to have, I'm offering you a hard-light model. Electromagnetic field projected onto a surface. Deflects and reflects just about any projectile you care to name, including EMP weaponry. Just don't try it with a neutron bomb or laser."

Steve raised an eyebrow at him. That was bleeding edge tech, and still in development. Even SHIELD didn't have it yet, though he'd overheard several agents verbally salivating over the idea. Only two companies were even bothering to research and develop it, for that matter: Hammertech and Stark Industries. And both said it was still years away from implementation. "And just how did you get the specs for that? I thought it was still mostly theoretical."

"I'll have you know that I designed this myself, from the ground up." Tony drew himself up, and Steve honestly couldn't tell if he was offended or pretending to be. 

"Humph." Still a bit disbelieving, but intrigued, Steve accepted that. They were far enough away from what most people considered civilization that information bursts took days or sometimes weeks to reach them. There was no way Tony could have stolen the specs unless he'd done so before getting on the ship. "Alright. I'll take your word for it."

Only partly mollified, which argued for his having taken real offense, Tony glared at him. "Damned right, you will."

Shaking his head with a smile he couldn't bite back tugging at his lips, Steve held up his hands in mock surrender. "Alright, alright! Show me what it can do."

Tony was starting to get under his skin, and Steve didn't know how to feel about that.


	3. Chapter 3

Only hours after their conversation in the workshop, the Chitauri decided that Steve and his team had had enough rest, and set an ambush.

Dernier had been the one to spot it, and had tried to warn them, but he'd been a fraction of a second too late. They'd blundered into it carelessly, and now they were going to have to fight their way out.

As the ship's alarms began blaring, Steve cursed vehemently. This was the last thing they needed. They weren't relying on stealth, it had to be said, but the less attention they drew as they crossed enemy territory, the better. "Dugan," he called, "you're on ship duty. The rest of you, get into your suits. Tony--"

"Don't say it. I'm on my way."

Steve huffed and hurried off to his own suit bay with Peggy hot on his heels. 

There were several air locks on the ship -- two fore and two aft, one on either side of the ship -- and a couple of suit bays stashed near each. It saved a lot of time when the team needed to get off-ship in a hurry. His and Peggy's were both at the forward end of the ship, near the bridge where they were likely to be found throughout the day cycle.

"You think they were expecting us?" Peggy asked him.

Steve considered that, flinging himself at his locker and slamming his palm down on the biometric scanner. "I doubt it, but anything's possible," he answered as he started his suit powering up and got himself strapped into it. "We don't know what kind of detection equipment they use or how to jam it. Pretty sure there are no spies at HQ, though."

The moment the helmet closed around his head and his HUD came up, Iron Man's distinctive electronically altered voice came over his comms. "We've got three squads harassing our ship, and two more defending theirs. Call it, Captain."

Steve scowled. How had Iron Man gotten himself linked into their comms? He'd expected he'd have to do that manually for this fight. Setting aside that issue for later, Steve growled under his breath. "Morita, Falsworth, Dernier, Barnes, defend our ship. Carter, Iron Man, Jones, you're with me. We're going on the offensive. Dugan, shoot down anything that moves and isn't us. Tony, make sure the ship stays intact."

He got a chorus of 'ayes', and his team smoothly moved into position with the ease of long practice. All of them knew one another well enough that they could read one another's intentions without having to speak. Iron Man faltered for a moment before he followed.

The next half hour blurred into action and reaction, dodging, rolling, and taking any pot shots he could at their enemy. The Chitauri had expected them to counterattack, and it showed in their tactics. Rather than wait around near their ship and risk letting Steve's team slip past them, the two squads defending it moved out to engage them out in open space. Those attacking Steve's ship were being persistent and competent enough that half of the comms chatter was composed of swearing. Most of that was coming from Dernier, who had a habit of yelling at the enemy as he fought, and no one could break him of it. They were all accustomed enough to it to tune him out anyway.

Steve and his half of the team managed to collectively dispatch one squad, and that made the remaining Chitauri fight back harder, determined not to let them at the ship that was firing on Steve's. 

The renewed ferocity of the fighting forced them all apart, physically. The Chitauri singled them all out, once by one, and very effectively kept them all busy. At first they thought nothing of it. This was a tactic that they had all dealt with many times before. 'Divide and conquer' had been a military strategy for literally millennia, and was one of their own favored approaches. 

Iron Man was the first to figure out that something was wrong, but even as quick as he was, he was too late. "Cap," he called out, "keep an eye on them! They know the weak points in those armour models!"

Overlapping his last few words, Peggy cried out in pain. Ominously, after that, her comm line dissolved into static.

"Peggy!" Steve did his damnedest to get free of the enemies keeping him pinned down. "Damn it. _Peggy, respond!_ "

Before he could get free of his cluster of attackers, Iron Man snarled something that smeared into unintelligibility over the comms and rushed over to engage the Chitauri trying to break into Peggy's suit. His rage seemed to blind him, and Steve could only watch in a mix of worry and awe as Iron Man blasted every last Chitauri around Peggy out of commission ruthlessly.

Iron Man had been holding back, Steve realised, almost numbly. He'd been husbanding his power and seeing Peggy get hit had been enough of a push to make him cut loose.

"Iron Man," Bucky called over the comms, "don't worry about the stragglers, we'll keep them off your back. Just get Peggy back to the ship."

The only response they got was a short 'copy'.

Iron Man deftly jetted in between the bodies of the Chitauri he'd left hanging in space, lifeless and looking a bit like grotesque broken dolls, and caught Peggy in his arms. There was no response from her, and Steve couldn't help but worry that it was because the hit had taken out her life support and left her to suffocate or killed her outright.

As they'd promised, Bucky and the others Steve had assigned to defend their ship joined the fight against the Chitauri defenders, giving Iron Man the opening he needed to get Peggy back to their ship and Steve and Gabe some much needed relief from the pressure the remaining Chitauri continued to put on them.

What seemed like seconds later, only the mop-up was left. The skirmish was over with an abruptness that left Steve reeling, leftover adrenaline making him wish he could use his armour's weapons to blow up the Chitauri ship, and his worry for Peggy making him want to simply drop everything and rush back to his own without a care for the aftermath of the fight.

Bucky seemed to materialise out of nowhere to hang in front of him, and Steve flinched, reflexively bringing up his weapons. Bucky's hands shot up.

"Hey, whoa! Cap, it's me! Friendly!"

"Sorry," Steve managed to reply without the words getting caught in his throat. "I'm a bit on edge."

"No kidding," Gabe ribbed him. "Get back to the _Glory_ and check on her," he added, a sympathetic note in his voice. "We'll deal with that Chitauri ship and scuttle her."

\------

Peggy was stuck in the tiny med bay their ship boasted, and very vocally unhappy about it. The shot she'd taken had given her a nasty concussion despite the armour she'd been wearing, and she'd be a day or two recovering, even with the med bay facilities helping speed things along. Steve sometimes had to marvel at just how tough and stubborn she really was, even though he knew intimately that it was exactly those qualities that had gotten her the position she had.

Her armour, now dented and scarred, had saved her life, and Steve had the sinking feeling that it had only done so because of Tony's upgrades. In a very real way, he owed Tony her life, and he didn't know how to feel about that.

On the one hand, it made something warm coil behind his sternum, and made him very aware that he'd more or less let go of any antagonistic feeling toward Tony. It definitely helped that he did still love Peggy and anyone who cared about her was worth keeping onsides. On the other, he was increasingly attracted to Tony, and he knew it. For all that he continued to resist, stubbornly fighting not to betray Peggy in thought or deed, Steve knew it was probably a losing battle.

For that matter, he wasn't sure what Iron Man's relationship to Tony was, beyond that of mechanic-and-fighter, but it was clear they were friends, at the very least. They had to be for their close partnership to work. Whether it was more than friendship, though...

Steve wasn't sure what to feel about that thought. 

Iron Man had disappeared back into the workshop the moment he'd gotten back aboard with Peggy and settled her on the bed in the med bay. Tony had seemed to take his place, hurrying out of his workshop to fret over her.

Steve had watched, vaguely amused despite the situation, as Tony seemed to bounce around the med bay from machine to machine, tutting over this inadequacy or that out of date tech, in another display of caring-disguised-as-disdain-for-their-tech. It was kind of sweet, and Steve found he liked knowing that Tony so clearly wanted the team -- and not just Peggy -- to stay in one piece. It really only made his conflicting feelings over Tony shade toward approval, and he knew it, for all that he wasn't ready to admit it out loud. The man was winning him over, and doing it a lot faster than Steve had expected.

Peggy caught Steve's eyes and raised an eyebrow at him, and Steve realised he had a smile on his face that probably approached sappy. 

Shit.

"Tony," she requested, "would you give us a minute? I need to talk to Steve."

Tony straightened as though he'd touched a live wire and gotten a shock. "Right, sure. I'll be back later."

Steve watched him hurry out of the room and wanted to wince. Peg always could see right through him. "I know what you're thinking," he told her. "Don't even start."

Peggy laughed at him, then winced when it jostled her sore head. "You always were good at lying to yourself," she replied. "Do us both a favor and stop."

Scrubbing his hands over his face with a groan, Steve tried to force aside the instinctive denial that rose to his lips and mostly succeeded. "Alright, fine," he conceded, "he's... He's interesting, and I can't seem to help myself. Is that what you want to hear?" 

"Well, it's more honest. Steve, if you're attracted to him, that's not a crime. As you so correctly pointed out the other day, we never made any promises. You are not bound to me, nor I to you. I will not stand in the way if you want a relationship."

"But I love you."

"Perhaps." Peggy gave him a knowing look. "But perhaps not."

Drawing himself up to his full height, Steve growled under his breath. "No, we are not having that discussion again. I know my own mind and my own feelings. You're not gonna convince me otherwise."

"I suppose we'll see, then. I've said my piece." Relaxing back into the thin cushions, she closed her eyes. "Go debrief your team, and get some rest. I'll be fine."


	4. Chapter 4

Sure enough, two day cycles later, Peggy was back on her feet and back to normal. Tony seemed to be as relieved about that as he was, Steve was bemused to note. The moment the debrief after that ambush had been over, he'd hastily run off to his workshop, and set himself to work giving the med bay an overhaul. Steve had seen the results -- the place gleamed, now, in a way it never had, probably not even when it had been new -- and Peggy had told him about the upgrade process, with a smile in her voice.

Listening to her, back on the bridge of the ship, where they always seemed to have their important discussions, Steve had had a minor epiphany of his own. She sounded almost as sappy as he suspected he'd looked the other day.

Peggy had picked up on that too, unsurprisingly. She'd caught his eyes and demanded to know what he was thinking. "Steve," she'd opened that can of worms without hesitation, "what's running through your head? I know that look."

He shrugged. "I'm not gonna stand in your way, either," he told her, quoting her words back to her, "if you want a relationship."

She'd grinned broadly at him. "Now that is rather more mature than I expected."

"What, you thought I'd throw a tantrum?"

"You've been known to," Peggy riposted, "especially when people you care about are involved. I remember well how you went off and nearly got yourself killed when Barnes got captured in the first war."

Silently acknowledging the truth of that with a shrug, Steve let the silence draw out for a moment. "That was a different situation, but I can't really convince you otherwise," he said. "So now what?"

"Now it's up to Tony." Peggy replied tartly. "I'm not about to let this devolve into a squabble over anyone's affections. Not now, when we have a war to fight."

"And after?"

"If we all survive," she told him, "I have nothing against sharing."

Steve stared at her, stunned speechless, for a long moment. That... was actually a pretty intriguing idea. He'd assumed Tony would have to choose, and, hell, he might still, if he only wanted one of them, but having the option... He nodded sharply. "I could get behind that idea."

Peggy smirked, looking like the cat that had gotten the cream. "Good. I thought you might."

\------

For the first few hours after his discussion with Peggy, Steve had been tempted to simply ask Tony what he wanted, whether he was even interested. He'd fought the urge, knowing that opening that can of worms before they'd dealt with the Chitauri was a terrible idea, but the idea kept plaguing him.

That impulse was short-circuited by orders that came in from Fury. The whole team -- including both Tony and Iron Man, in the same place for the first time since they'd left SHIELD HQ -- had been assembled in the small galley to receive their orders, and discuss possible options and courses of action.

They were to get to the wormhole that the Chitauri were using to get into the solar system and close it, if they could. It's precise location wasn't known, but it was somewhere near the outer boundary of the sector, as far as they knew. Somewhere near Saturn's orbit. Fury had specifically suggested that Tony should work on the technological side of the problem, in his mission brief. Steve suspected an ulterior motive, there, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

The team knew just how good Tony was with tech, meantime, and wholeheartedly supported the idea. Steve was a bit less sure this was a good plan. He had come to learn exactly how hard Tony pushed himself, and this new assignment was liable to worsen that little problem. He knew better than to bring it up around the team, though. It would only make Tony defensive, and would make him stubbornly push even harder just to prove he could do it.

In the end, Peggy was the one to find a solution that seemed workable. She'd caught Tony's eyes before the briefing session ended. "Tony," she said firmly, "here's how this is going to work. I know you want to spend every waking moment on this, but that is not an option." He tried to protest, but she glared him into silence. "No. I won't have you working yourself to the bone so much that you're too tired to keep Iron Man in fighting shape. Or yourself, for that matter. We can't assume that the ship will always be safe from attack."

Dumdum nodded firmly. "Hear hear."

Several of the others added their support. The team had more or less adopted Tony, probably because Steve and Peggy had, and it showed. "If at the end of a standard eight-hour shift, you're still in your workshop," Peggy told him, "I'm hauling you out bodily."

Steve huffed, amused by the mental image. Bucky took it a step further. "Gonna carry him off to bed, Carter?"

Tony raised an eyebrow at Bucky. "Barnes, that's no way to talk to a superior officer."

"I can defend my own honor, thanks," Peggy put in tartly, getting rueful chuckles out of nearly everyone in the room. All of them knew that damned well.

It definitely got Tony's attention though. "I wouldn't be opposed," he joked. "But I do have a few rules I adhere to."

He got hoots and snickers out of Gabe and Dernier. "I feel like I should have a bowl of popcorn," Gabe announced. "You just going to let him come on to your girl like that, Cap?"

Steve shrugged. "A joke is one thing," he replied mildly, secure in the knowledge that he and Peggy had already talked about this. "Acting on it is another entirely. And I'm not about to try to make a decision for Peggy."

"Good answer," Peggy told him.

"So what exactly are we doing, then?" Dumdum pulled the discussion back on track.

"The plan, as I see it," Steve replied, "is to continue on as we have been, but to try to find a way to deal with that wormhole, as well. We're already encountering more resistance as we travel, which means we're getting closer to the wormhole's location. It will continue increasing as we go, and we need to be prepared for that. Peggy's exactly right. We can't afford to exhaust ourselves before we get to the wormhole. That applies to all of us, and not just Tony."

Falsworth nodded. "I'd say eight hour shifts is a smart move for all of us, then. We can take it watch-on-watch, rather than half of us awake for the whole day cycle or the whole night cycle."

Bucky put in, "And if we have four shifts there'd be a couple of hours overlap between each."

Dernier grinned. "Bonne idee. D'accord."

Morita nodded. "Sounds good to me. I'm in."

"That's settled, then," Peggy added decisively. "Steve, decide who gets which shift, and let us know. For now, I'm going to suggest we all get some rest and set the first watch to begin at 0800 tomorrow."

\------

They managed to go a day cycle and a half before they ran into the next Chitauri force. It was larger than the ambush they'd blundered into, but this time the team was on the alert. They managed to get the drop on the patrol and shoot down the Chitauri ship before more than a third of the fighters aboard could deploy. In the end, there were only two light injuries: Dumdum strained the muscles in his left arm thanks to an issue with the servos in his suit, and Morita took a bad hit to his lower back trying to get Dumdum out of trouble.

Tony seemed to blame himself for the injuries. He felt that it was somehow his fault that Dumdum's servos had failed after getting hit by a lucky shot from one of the Chitauri guns, and Steve didn't like that Tony was taking the blame for a lucky hit onto his shoulders. Tony seemed to think he was Atlas, forced to bear up the weight of the whole world and more. Steve surprised himself somewhat, though, with just how much he didn't like it.

He would have taken action, too, but Peggy got there first.

As she'd threatened, she'd marched determinedly into Tony's workshop and very literally hauled him out bodily. She'd thrown him over her shoulders in a fireman's carry and ignored his squirming and attempts to get loose as she strode back through the ship. Bucky had caught sight of them and nearly laughed himself sick.

Steve couldn't help but note that Tony's hair looked way too good when it was ruffled and in disarray, and that the carry showcased Peggy's strength wonderfully. The glimpse of the workshop behind her showed Steve that Tony had been hard at work when Peggy had interrupted him. The lamps were still lit, brightly illuminating Tony's workbench, and several gleaming bits of red-and-gold lacquered armour lay there.

"Barnes," she warned casually as she passed Bucky, where he leaned helplessly against the wall of the corridor in a desperate attempt to stay standing, "you'll want to get a hold of yourself, or you're next."

Steve carefully kept his silence.

Somehow, very confusingly, the whole scene felt weirdly right. 

It was a hell of a reversal of his attitude toward Tony during their meeting a week ago, and he knew it. Tony really had won him over very quickly, and Steve wasn't sure how to feel about that. That simultaneously reassured and worried him. It meant that Tony fit their little family perfectly, whether or not he chose to pursue a relationship with Steve or with Peggy. But on the other hand, there was nothing that said he would stick with them after his mission, and it would hurt to have to part ways.

And to make matters worse, Steve had done some thinking. He knew it was more likely that Tony would go for Peggy than for him. Purely on a statistical level. There were far more heterosexual-identifying people in the universe than of any other known orientation. He _knew_ that. But the idea that he might end up on his own while Peggy got to have Tony stung. The idea had a tangled mess of emotions attached, though, that went far deeper than simple hurt or rejection. The possibility that Tony and Peggy might become an item was only making Steve want to keep Tony on his team more rather than get rid of him. Even if he couldn't physically have Tony, he wanted the man around. With or without Iron Man.

It went without saying that the strength of his own reaction to that idea was another revelation that he needed to consider.

If he didn't, Peggy would force him to.


	5. Chapter 5

The next time Steve visited Tony in the workshop, at the end of his shift and the beginning of Tony's, he found chaos on par with a literal explosion, for all that there hadn't been one -- it would have been picked up by the ship's systems and caused an alarm. The workshop looked like someone had all but torn it apart in sheer angry frustration, and Tony stood in the center of the destruction, panting for air and trying to regulate his breathing.

"Tony?" Steve eyed him warily. The man might not be a trained fighter like his teammates, but Steve knew better than to just walk up to him or touch him after whatever had made him react like that. "You alright?"

A creative string of curses answered him. "It doesn't _work_."

Daring take a few steps closer, he asked. "What doesn't?"

Tony gave him a sour look. "Every damned thing."

Still not sure what the problem was, Steve tried again, taking another couple of cautious steps and picking his way carefully across the floor. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

That unleashed a torrent of words. "What the hell do you think I'm doing? I'm trying to find a way to collapse that damned wormhole, and I've got nothing to work with that will help except replacement battle suit parts. Not one of those will do a damned thing to a wormhole. There's just not enough power. It _doesn't fucking work_."

"What about the ship's armaments?"

"Are you fucking kidding me? Those are decades old and were underpowered pieces of shit when they were new. I might be able to do something with the ship's reactor, but that would leave us stranded and without life support, even if I could make it work, and if we survived the attempt to use whatever cobbled together monstrosity that produced." Breathing hard again, Tony scrubbed at his face with his hands and groaned, sounding like a man clinging to the end of a fraying rope. "I could use Iron Man's on-board power supply, but that would leave him without life support or any other functions, including the power to move."

"Come on," Steve decided. "Come to the galley."

"I have to--"

"Come to the galley," Steve interrupted him and ignored the irritated growl he got. "I'm not above hauling you out of here over my shoulders if I have to."

Giving in, albeit with ill grace, Tony glared at him, but stepped toward the door. "All of you are far too used to using force to get what you want."

Steve huffed. "So? It works. You need to spend some time not thinking about this problem."

"That's not how it works," Tony objected. "If I'm not thinking about it, I'm not making any progress."

"You can spare fifteen minutes."

"Not really, but I can see you'll never agree."

Steve grinned at him. "Let's go see if there's any leftover coffee."

Mollified somewhat, and clearly irritated with himself for allowing himself to surrender even that much, Tony nodded.

\------

True to expectations, it didn't take long for them to come across the next ambush. This time, prepared for the possibility, they spotted the Chitauri ship before it saw them thanks to Bucky's instincts for where an enemy might be hiding and Gabe's almost supernatural knack for reading the smallest blips on the scope. 

It didn't take long for the Chitauri to realise they'd lost the element of surprise, after that. They launched their defenses and a counterattack before Steve and his team could get in range to deal with the main ship, forcing them to engage one-on-one in open space, and leave handling the Chitauri ship to Peggy and Gabe, who'd stayed aboard their own.

The skirmish was short, but thanks to the quick reaction of the Chitauri it was also rather brutal. Morita and Falsworth both ended up getting carried off the field, with injuries and enough hard hits to their battle suits that they couldn't maneuver well enough to get back aboard ship on their own power. For his part, Iron Man had fought like a demon, trying to be everywhere at once, and almost succeeding, too. Every time Steve had looked for his team to check on them, he'd spotted the distinctive red-and-gold armour with a different person. 

When the battlefield had fallen silent, Iron Man had made a bee-line for the Chitauri ship.

"Iron Man!" Steve called after him.

"Yeah, Cap?" Iron Man replied, sounding almost distracted.

"Where do you think you're going!"

"Tony wants whatever I can salvage off that ship," he informed Steve, who suspected Iron Man had had no such orders, but rather made that up on the spot. "Said that if I can find any proton torpedoes or some other good power source, that might be enough for him to build what you need to close the wormhole." 

Steve hesitated for a moment, then swore. "I'm going with you. Peggy? You're in charge until we get back. Make sure everyone's checked out and patched up if need be."

"Copy, Captain," Peggy acknowledged. "We've got your backs."

They found nothing usable, and Iron Man looked like he wanted to slump to the floor in disappointment. Steve had to physically walk him back out of the wrecked Chitauri vessel. It took longer to get back to their own ship than it had to get out here. 

Once he had shucked the armour he wore for outship battles and hung up his new shield projector, he made his way to the med bay to check up on Morita and Falsworth. They both were doing their best not to roll their eyes at Tony, as it turned out. Their mechanic was fussing over their injuries and muttering god only knew what technobabble about exosuit upgrades.

It was clear he was less freaked out than when Peggy had gotten hit. Whether that was because their injuries were less severe or because Peggy was more important to him, Steve wasn't sure.

"Captain," Morita had growled when Steve walked in, clearly nearing the end of his patience, "do us a favor and put our mechanic in the shower. He needs to clean up and we need some quiet."

"Come on, Tony. He's got a point." Steve had snickered, but done as requested, slinging an arm around Tony's shoulders and steering him out of the room. If he left his arm where it was longer than he needed to, well, he wasn't going to draw attention to it and Tony wasn't protesting.

Well, not about that anyway. He complained plenty about being kicked out.

\------

"-- nah, you'll see," Dugan was saying. "Fifty on Carter."

Steve paused outside the galley door and listened. 

Dernier huffed. "Bah. Je crois que notre capitain va gagner. Cinquante."

Gabe laughed. "We'll see. I'm with Dernier. The cap's too hung up on Peggy to see anyone else that way."

Steve felt the flush of red climb up the back of his neck to his ears and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

When he told her, Peggy just raised an elegant eyebrow at him. "Did you really think they'd be able to resist?"

"Guess not." Steve let his head fall back and he stared at the ceiling for a second. "Luckily for us they're all wrong."

Peggy laughed at him. "That's the spirit." 

\------

The next Chitauri ships they encountered outclassed theirs. Their tiny minesweeper class ship was maybe a third the length and a quarter the tonnage of even one of the pair of larger battle cruisers they were up against.

Worse, they didn't have the element of surprise, this time. The cruisers spotted them long before their ship was in range to use any of its weaponry.

The team only pulled through because the Chitauri got overconfident and didn't bother blowing their little ship out of the sky. They managed to mobilise and the skirmish quickly turned brutal, but they were holding their own. Everyone was fighting well, and Iron Man had gotten good enough at reading their fights styles and their signals to integrate flawlessly with the team.

The Chitauri came at them in waves, as was their usual wont. That never seemed to change, though how they deployed those waves did.

Steve did what he could not to let his focus narrow down too much. Instead he tried to let the chaos of the battlefield wash over him and resolve into tactics he could counter. "Gabe, on your ten o'clock, low. Keep 'em off the ship! Dernier, Morita, see if you can get close enough to take a shot at their ship's engines. The rest of you, with me. We need to keep them busy!"

He got a chorus of ayes, and the team reformed up around him.

After an indeterminate length of time, the almost hypnotic rhythm of the battle broke.

"Steve!" Tony's voice shattered his focus, "if we can capture at least one of those cruisers, I think I can make Fury his bomb! They have a different kind of impulse thruster than your ship does, and a lot more power!"

"Roger that," Dugan answered, a grim sort of glee in his voice, before Steve could find the words to respond. "We'll see what we can do, Tony."

"Agreed," Steve put in. "Iron Man, you're with me. We're going to give them a target to shoot at! The rest of you keep the bastards off our backs and follow us in at a distance."

Things actually went their way for a while. The Chitauri didn't realise what they were planning until it was very nearly too late to stop them. Moments before they would have reached their goal, the Chitauri responded to their push, and sent what was likely all of their remaining fighters at the team.

Suddenly forced to fight for every inch of forward progress, Steve started swearing under his breath. All of them were feeling the strain of the drawn ought fight, now, and it showed in their slower reaction times. They would take hits now that they wouldn't have earlier, just because they were tired, and Steve hated thinking about it. The grunts of effort and slight sounds of pain seemed to resound over the comms.

And then it got worse. The Chitauri fired -- one more salvo of shots among many -- but this time, Steve heard Peggy shout in a mix of fear and anger and the ship alarms started blaring. 

Her next words made Steve go cold all over. "Hull breach and explosive decompression in sector five, starboard! Bulkheads in emergency seal mode! Bloody fucking Hell! I can't fly the ship and get to Tony! Someone get back here, _yesterday_!"

It took Steve a stunned moment to make the switch to fighting defensively again. "Dugan! You're closest!"

"No!" Iron Man jumped in and Steve nearly took a shot at him in blindingly pure reactionary anger. "There's no need," he went on.

"If you think we're going to leave Tony to suffocate--" Gabe started, grimly picking off Chitauri one by one, ruthlessly efficient.

Iron Man cut him off. "You won't be." There was a pause as the Chitauri pulled back to regroup and he cleared his throat. When he spoke again Steve felt a shudder run down his spine, because that was Tony's voice. "The jig would be up the second you got to the workshop, so I might as well tell you now."

Iron Man -- _Tony_ \-- sounded mostly unapologetic, and his tone suggested he would have shrugged as he took down several more of his own targets. Steve took the chance to try to scrape together two coherent words.

Peggy bet him to it. "You arsehole," he said, her tone almost blank. "You are going to owe us all a damned good reason for this charade the moment you're back aboard. Monty, keep an eye on the group to your five, high."

"Damned right," Morita growled as Falsworth turned and took aim, his voice cutting across Dernier's and rendering his swearing unintelligible.

"Fine, fine," Tony responded tightly. "Fight, first."

Bucky muttered something about idiots and blind luck, as he continued picking off Chitauri without missing a beat. "Cap, on your three, low," he warned. "They're trying to sneak past us."

"Copy." Steve threw himself back into the fight, using the ferocity of his counterattack to let him bleed off some of the anger and betrayal he felt. Hitting things had always been his preferred way of venting his emotions, and it was probably best that he work off the worst of it before he got back aboard ship.

It took them another long hour and a half to finally gain the upper hand and keep it, and in the process their little ship took a few more hits. The first hit hadn't done much damage to critical ship systems, or her propulsion, but it had left Peggy trapped at the helm and sent all of them reeling on a psychological level -- if they lost the ship, they'd have no avenue of escape. There would be no way to make a tactical retreat if their ship got blown up, and losing Peggy into the bargain would be a blow strong enough to bring all of them to their knees.

The second hit to their ship had followed close on the first, almost as soon as they'd rallied on the heels of Tony's stunning revelation. That one had taken out the communications array and a chunk of the ship's dorsal plating. Hearing Peggy's voice cut out mid-swear had distracted all of them, and the Chitauri had gleefully taken advantage of the lapse to try to kill them. Long minutes later, they eventually managed to repel the attack and satisfy themselves that their ship was still flying. The overlapping swears of his team blurred into a low rumble of angry sound in Steve's ears, but since it meant they were all still alive, he didn't much care.

The last hit came just as the team finally managed to get to the first cruiser's engines and disable them. Tony had blasted at their mounting points, his shots as surgically precise as Bucky's ever were, and the sudden introduction of such a weak point had ended in the engines tearing the ship to pieces. They'd gone flying off in three different directions, taking parts of the ship's hull with them, and Tony had growled in a vicious sort of vengeful satisfaction.

Steve couldn't help but agree.

The other Chitauri ship turned tail, at that point, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. Instead, they left the crippled ship to flounder and turned their attention back to their own. Steve wanted to wince. She would probably have to be entirely scrapped after this disaster of a mission, right down to her bones. If they survived it somehow.


	6. Chapter 6

They'd waited until after they were sure the Chitauri were dead to investigate the wreckage of the battle cruiser. Tony had, without bothering to take off his armour, started working to fix up the ship and ignored all of the team's attempts to get him to allow himself to be checked out.

As Tony left through the central airlock, the only way into the damaged portions of the ship, the rest of the team turned to Steve more or less as one, as if to say 'well?'

"What?" Steve caught their eyes in turn. "Do I have something on my face?"

Dernier sniffed, just offended enough to reply, "Il faut que tu fasses ton choix."

Now that wasn't cryptic at all. Steve gave Dernier a confused look. "Huh?"

Gabe rolled his eyes. "Just go talk to the man."

"And be honest with him," Falsworth added.

The others nodded, in agreement on this point, for all that they had disagreed enough on what they thought would happen to have started their betting pool. Steve bit back a sigh. The galling thing was that they had a point. If he didn't chase down Tony and talk to him about this, Tony would probably assume the worst and hide from the storm he thought was coming.

\------

Before Steve could get to Tony -- he'd decided to wait until after Tony was done with the critical repairs -- the rest of the team suited back up and ventured out to the Chitauri ship.

Had one of his team been seriously injured, Steve would have deputised them to do it and taken on their portion of the salvage operation they were about to run. But since his knowledge of technology -- especially technology of the Chitauri variant -- was worse than useless, he was better off coordinating from their ship, even if the job chafed at his nerves fiercely.

As the others took their turns going out through the airlock, an hour or so after they'd finished the skirmish, the ship's communications array sent some static over every speaker aboard and those in the team's battle suits as well.

"Testing?" Peggy's voice came through next.

"Read you loud and clear," Bucky responded.

Steve felt tension he hadn't realised he carried melt away. Peggy was fine.

So was Tony. And their communications were functional again. Steve definitely wanted to know how the hell Tony had gotten it working so quickly. It was impressive. Even if the system had only been lightly damaged, he knew from experience that it could still take hours to check all of the many tiny fuses and wire connections.

Stepping into his battle suit just far enough that he could get to the radio, Steve put in, "If you find anything that you think Tony can use, let us know what it is, otherwise, we'll grab whatever we can use to fix up our own ship and move on. That other cruiser has to have reported our position by now, so we'd better be gone before they show up with reinforcements."

A chorus of ayes answered him, and Steve dared hope that they might be able to at least find a way to shut down the portal. That wouldn't solve their problems, by a long shot, but it would mean that if they could find a way to get to the portal, at least they had a hope of closing it.

As things stood right now, they lacked even that much.

Ever so painfully slowly, the reports from the team filtered through. Scattered air pockets containing Chitauri that tried to kill them, coolant leaks, the occasional fire that had yet to burn out, rooms full of corpses, and, possibly best of all, strange weaponry that the crew wasn't sure how to operate.

Anytime reports of weapons came through, Tony made sure to ask for at least two of them to test, disassemble, or cannibalise for his portal killer, but he never made a physical appearance in the areas of the ship that had retained atmosphere. Peggy stayed at the helm, keeping to the air pocket there. Steve knew that was the best choice for the time being. He did. But he was on edge and wanted to see at least one of them, to touch them and reassure his subconscious that they were really in one piece.

"Communications repairs complete," Tony's voice came over the comms, rasping slightly.

Steve was almost entirely certain that Tony was dehydrated and tired. "Come on back through the bulkhead airlock and take a break, then," he suggested.

Steve got a chuckle in response that seemed to telegraph a mix of determination and resignation. "Not yet, Cap," Tony disagreed. "Gotta patch up those holes in the hull, first. You could fly without touching 'em, sure, but it'd mean risking the ship's reactor. This model's old enough that there'd be a chance of it blowing."

Of the rest of the crew, Bucky was the best at those kinds of things. "Buck, come on back and help out with that, would you?"

"This kind of work's easier solo," Tony vetoed the idea before Bucky could reply.

Gabe started laughing. "Mom and Dad are having a fight, kids. Stay out of it."

The comment got more chuckles from the rest of the team. Steve made a face. He couldn't deny that it sounded like they were. And denying it would only solidify the team's opinion that Gabe was right, anyway. "Jones," he responded drily, "I don't want to know who you're casting as 'mom'. And I think Peggy might have something to say about that, regardless."

The others started laughing harder, and Peggy huffed at all of them. "None of you has the correct equipment to count as 'mom'," she put in, "and I haven't the inclination. If I hear any more about it, I might have to take action. Captain, let them finish their salvage and scuttle and make yourself useful by bringing me an exo-suit."

That sounded like a request for a private chat. "Right. I'll see what I can scrounge up."

"I'd suggest grabbing the spare I was working on from the 'shop," Tony offered, "but that whole deck is under hard vacuum, and I'm not sure I can patch it with what I have access to."

Bucky hummed thoughtfully. "Want a couple of the spare hull plates from this cruiser? We're starin' at a whole stack of 'em."

"The shape'd be all wrong, but that's better than nothing. Sure. Haul 'em over, if you have the means," Tony said, sounding relieved.

Giving in, Steve went in search of one of the spare exo-suits that they kept on hand for emergencies. They were horribly uncomfortable, unarmed, and bulky, intended for single use, but one of them would suffice to get Peggy back to the larger air pocket or her battle suit.

\------

It took Steve several minutes to get a hold of an exo-suit because the compartment containing the nearest supply had wound up under vacuum, forcing him to either go back for his battle suit to get to them, or make his way all the way through the ship to the engine room. He chose to get his battle-suit.

Why the exo-suits weren't stored next to the bulkhead airlocks, Steve had no idea. That would have made far more sense to him.

"In newer ships, they are," Tony told him, sounding like he was focused on something else, and Steve realised he'd said that out loud.

"You know they gave us this ship because it was old enough that we could actually fly it, right?" Gabe answered Tony.

"Oh, sure," Tony grumbled, "but you're missing out on so many safety features. Like a reactor with decent output and good shielding and engines with enough output to actually move the ship."

"Those sound nice," Falsworth agreed, "but if we can't operate them without spending a long time training, either they're useless to us or we're useless to SHIELD."

"We could learn them," Peggy agreed, "but going into combat with a system you're only barely familiar with is a recipe for disaster. If you can't reflexively hit the right switch or pull the right lever, you might as well be dead."

Tony grumbled something under his breath. Everyone ignored it.

Steve finally got his hands on an exo-suit, then, and turned to leave the engine room. "If we all get through this, Tony," he offered, "we'll consider training on a new ship."

Tony scoffed. "Even if we all get through this, we'll probably never cross paths again."

Morita laughed at him. "I think you underestimate our collective stubbornness and ability to track down people if we put our minds to it. We'd find you. If only to get the Cap to stop moping."

Steve very carefully bit back his knee-jerk response to that statement, and the conversation trailed off, then. He carefully crammed his battle-suit into the bulkhead airlock, grateful for the silence. He could feel himself blushing bright pink, and couldn't decide if he was more relieved that the rest of the salvage team didn't have a visual on him, or irritated that it would probably still be visible when he got to Peggy.

Sometimes he cursed his pale skin.

Getting through the bridge airlock so that he could actually deliver the exo-suit to Peggy required some contortions. The airlock was slightly narrower and shorter than the others, as a defensive measure, to prevent hostile forces from blowing holes in the hull and simply storming the ship. The doors of other critical areas of the ship such as the engines were similarly small. 

It meant Steve had to crouch and twist his body into a rather uncomfortable position to fit himself in the small space.

At least it cycled quickly. He opened the door with a sense of relief, handed Peggy the exo-suit, and stepped back out of his battle-suit. 

The moment he was free of it, Peggy was there, stripping her comms set off her head and tossing it aside with the exo-suit. She stepped in close, pressing herself against him so that his hands automatically came up to rest on her waist, steadying her and holding her close. A beat later, her hands came up to cup his jaw and run through his hair, and she whispered, "you're okay." 

"Yeah," Steve replied, ducking his head to drop a kiss onto the crown of her head. "I'm fine, and so are all of the others."

"You need to read Tony the riot act," she sniffed, "or I will."

"Might be better if you do it," he told her, "the others are all betting on us, and that will give them a lot more to speculate about."

Peggy laughed, startled into it. "You might be right, at that. Those kinds of things are good for morale."

Letting his arms go fully around her, Steve held her close. "I knew you were fine, but I worried," he admitted.

"I know. And you'll worry about Tony until you can get your hands on him, too." Peggy raised her head and gave him a knowing smile. "Now, put that suit back on and go check on him. He wanted alone time, and we gave him some, but if you let him I'd bet he'll go hole up in his workshop and shut us all out."

"Seems likely." Steve agreed. "You staying here?"

"For now. I'll keep our heading straight."


	7. Chapter 7

Steve found Tony welding hullplates over the holes with several of the salvage team members helping hold them in place.

Dernier spotted him immediately, and hailed him. "Capitain," he said, handing Steve a hull plate some three meters across, "tiens."

Steve eyed it dubiously for a moment, then delicately maneuvered it into place next to the one Tony was welding, just in time for their mechanic to seamlessly start working on the new piece. It was just about large enough to cover the rest of the hole that had been punched in the _Glory_ 's side.

"Steady," Tony said when Steve's concentration slipped slightly, making the hull plate slide about a centimeter away from making contact with the hull. It didn't float off into space or anything like that, but the difference in its shape and the _Glory_ 's meant that they had to put pressure on the plates so that they made contact well enough for Tony to weld them together. 

\------

By the time they were all back aboard the _Glory_ they were worn out and tired, but Tony had a pile of salvage to tinker with and the ship was patched up well enough to limp onward.

Peggy set a course for them and announced that she would keep the helm for the rest of the shift -- a mere hour and a half, meantime -- and that she expected to be relieved at that time.

The team glanced around at one another, coming to a silent agreement. "Alright, Pegs," Bucky spoke up, "you got it. I'll come get you after I've had a nap."

Bucky, Steve knew, would get a pass on some similar duty from the others later. That was simply the way they worked. It was a system they'd developed during the first war, and simply continued using, even with Tony in their midst as a comparative stranger.

Tony -- Steve had to bite his lip to keep from laughing at the undignified sight their usually well-groomed mechanic made -- who had slumped forward onto the table in the galley and was dead asleep, snoring quietly and drooling into his sleeve. He hadn't woken when Bucky had spoken, which Steve took to mean he really needed the rest.

When he glanced up, his team was giving him an array of knowing looks. "Put him to bed, Cap," Jones suggested, not raising his voice.

The rest of them nodded.

Giving in, Steve shrugged. "Guess I can yell at him after he wakes up," he agreed.

"Oh, I don't doubt that we all will," Falsworth said and nodded.

As if that had been the cue they'd been waiting for, the whole team dispersed as one to hit their bunks the moment Monty was finished speaking. 

\------

The problem, Steve discovered, wasn't putting Tony to bed. The man didn't wake when Steve called to him a couple of times, or when Steve picked him up, or during the walk back to Steve's quarters -- which Steve had chosen to put him in since the workshop was still under vacuum and would be for several more day cycles as their ship's reactor slowly repressurised the ship. 

No, the problem was that Tony had latched onto him and wasn't letting go.

He'd knelt down to put Tony on his bed, and rather than sprawl out, Tony had slung an arm around Steve's neck, pulling him down further.

Helpless in the face of his sudden demotion to teddy bear, Steve had hesitated, and Tony had taken that as a cue to pull harder, mumbling something incomprehensible under his breath.

Off balance, Steve had been forced to plant an elbow on the bed to avoid falling on Tony. This time, more or less nose to nose with Tony, Steve could make out the words.

"C'mon, stay."

The soft vulnerability in Tony's voice won him over where duty generally would have allowed him to resist. Pulling back just far enough to loosen the collar of Tony's shirt and his own, got him a plaintive whine. Steve hurriedly toed off his boots and put his hands on Tony's hips.

That calmed Tony enough that he allowed Steve to manhandle him into less of a sprawl. They both fit on the narrow bed, though just barely. Steve allowed himself a wince for how Tony might react to waking up tangled up with him, then settled in to enjoy this while it lasted.

The whole team would figure it out the moment the next shift started, but Steve couldn't bring himself to care.

Nothing had happened, save some comfort, and nothing would until after this mission was over.

\------

Steve woke the next morning, feeling far warmer than he was used to and pinned under a heavy weight.

It took him a moment to realise what had woken him was Tony, who was trying to pull free of his arms without drawing attention.

It took Tony a second to notice that he'd failed in his aim. 

"Feeling better?" Steve asked him, not letting go.

Tony made a face. "In the short term, maybe. Let me up. I have to go work on that salvage."

Forced to concede the point, Steve slowly released him. "Breakfast first. And I do mean more than just coffee."

"Hmph. You're such a mother hen." Tony stood and stretched, then turned on his heel and left the room.

Steve stared after him for a stunned moment. Tony had looked like he wanted to escape from something. Or someone.

And the only possibility was him.

Steve winced. Either he'd pushed too hard or Tony really _wasn't_ interested after all. Well. More accurately, he'd let Tony push too hard. But the point stood.

Hauling himself up out of his bed took effort, but Steve managed to make himself presentable without losing too much time.

Even so, he was too late to the galley. Morita looked up when he entered, alone in the space. "Sleep well, captain?" He asked, mock solicitous.

"Tolerably. Seen Tony?"

Morita laughed and replied with glee in his voice. "Tony came through a few minutes ago, muttering something about how he apparently slept with you without his knowledge. Then he slugged back his coffee and left. He's probably already suited up and gone to bring those salvaged weapons to his workshop." 

Steve resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. "And Peggy?"

"Hopefully asleep. If Bucky forgot to relieve her, we'll hear about it for years."

Pulling out the fixings for his own breakfast, Steve nodded. "You're probably right about that. She still hasn't let me forget that one morning I overslept and missed my watch."

They sat in companionable silence while Steve ate, and all of the others gradually appeared, one by one. All of them looked worn down and tired enough that Steve was tempted to send them back to bed. He knew better, though.

Instead, he stood and cleared his throat. "If there are no objections, I'm going to suggest a half-shift now, for those of us who're awake, and then another full sleep shift. We'll just move the other shifts up a few hours and then pick up the cycle again. Let Peggy sleep through until her shift if she needs to."

"Won't hear anything from me," Dugan replied, looking like he was about to slump into his breakfast face first.

No one spoke up against the idea, so after a suitable pause, Steve nodded. "Motion passes."

\------

About a half hour after Tony had made his escape, Steve found himself standing outside Tony's workshop. The man had found a way to get that section of the ship to pressurise first. Steve had no idea how. Probably some clever manipulation of the ship's airlocks and reactor valves, but he'd learned to expect very unorthodox methods and leaps of logic where Tony was involved. It could very well be that he'd done something totally unintuitive and brilliant, instead of taking the most logical path.

Setting his speculations aside, Steve forced himself through the workshop door.

Tony was sitting hunched over his workbench, totally absorbed in what he was doing. What that was, Steve wasn't sure, but one of the Chitauri weapons they'd salvaged lay on the floor in disassembled pieces.

"Tony?" Steve decided to approach carefully.

Tony hummed distractedly in response. "Mmm?"

"The rest of the crew is sacking out. You going to?" Steve forced himself not to think about the way Tony had uncomfortably run out on him not four hours ago.

"Huh?" Tony actually looked up at him, then, and the surprise on his face when he spotted Steve was almost comical. Tony stared at him for a beat, looking like he wasn't sure how to react, before he squared his shoulders and set his jaw stubbornly. "No, Cap, I'm not. Not when I'm finally making some progress on a way to save our collective asses."

Tony was deflecting hard. Steve considered him for a second then shrugged. "Fine," he answered, "but I'm siccing Peggy on you when she wakes up."

Making a slightly derisive sound, Tony turned back to what he'd been doing, but his shoulders relaxed. "Whatever. Go sleep," he said.

Fairly certain that he'd read Tony correctly, Steve huffed. "Can't. I'm on-shift until the others wake up again. Someone has to keep an eye on the _Glory_."

That got Tony's attention again. "Are you telling me we're the only two people awake on this boat?"

Steve had to bite his tongue, hard. The _Glory_ wasn't a _boat._ "Not quite. Bucky's flying. But for the next several hours, we're it. I'll be at the helm with Buck, if you need anything."

"Sure, go fly this thing."

\------

Thankfully for them, nothing more happened until after the team finished crawling back out of their bunks and waking one another. The silence and lack of Chitauri ships had Bucky on edge, and Steve couldn't help but agree; this felt like the silence before the storm. Something big was building on the metaphorical horizon, and they couldn't see it.

The feeling kept them on edge and tense right up until Peggy had sought him out. She'd done so the moment she was conscious and had eaten, some six hours after she'd gone off to sleep, and demanded that Steve give her the rundown on what had happened in the interim. 

His report had been a short one, and the moment she'd found out that Tony was still holed up in his workshop, she'd stormed off, and Steve had no doubt whatever that she would pry him out of there and force him to get some rest.

Bucky laughed about it with him, then made a comment that had Steve wondering if Bucky had guessed the truth of his feelings and Peggy's. "Tony doesn't stand a chance, does he?"

"Nah," he agreed, "she'll have him tucked in before he knows what happened."

"She's done it to you," Bucky nodded. "But that's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then, Buck?" Steve wasn't about to spill his guts that easily. Not even to his best friend.

Bucky eyes him knowingly, seeing the deflection for what it was and not allowing him to get away with it. "She's sweet on him, isn't she."

That wasn't, strictly speaking, a question, so Steve didn't answer.

"You are, too, I'd wager," Bucky added after a beat. "I know that look on your face."

So he had worked it out. "Even if your speculations were accurate, Buck, it wouldn't matter. We're on a suicide mission. What you're suggesting is both fraternization and more than a little bit unethical."

Bucky snorted. "Meaning that my suspicions are pretty much on target. Don't worry, I won't rat you out to the others. I'd lose the sizable betting pool they've got going."

Steve raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Go get some sleep. You're seeing things that aren't there."

Bucky laughed at him, obviously not believing a word, and went.


	8. Chapter 8

The next time he saw Tony, after his sleep shift, when he staggered into the galley in search of something to cram into his mouth, the man was sitting at the long table, lolling back in his chair like he was about to fall asleep where he sat.

"I can't test it," he opened, "but it should work."

It took Steve a few sleep-stupid seconds to puzzle out what that meant, but when he did, it woke him up better than a shot of caffeine could have.

\------

It was clear that Tony glossed over a lot of the details when he explained what he'd done, dismissing them as very technical and not relevant. "Suffice to say," he'd said, "that once I fire it, the portal ought to go down pretty much instantly. Problem is that it's a bit fragile. I'll have to be careful that I don't take too many hits before I can get in range to use it."

Somehow, something about those words had struck Steve as worrying. He couldn't put his finger on what it was, though.

Letting it go, he made a note to keep an eye on Tony and his portal killer. He'd known he couldn't interrogate Tony in front of the team and expect to get an answer. It would have to wait for later, when he could corner Tony alone, or maybe get Peggy to do so.

Pressuring Tony, especially in public, had the effect of making him clam up, they'd learned. The man got more tight lipped the more they asked him questions.

That had not been a game Steve had wanted to play right that minute.

\------

The portal loomed in front of them suddenly, surrounded by dense crowds of Chitauri, and it was suddenly clear to Steve why they hadn't met any patrols; all of them were here, massing with the others for an attack.

There was no way to sneak past them to the portal, and no way of knowing how much longer the large group of enemy forces would stay here.

They also couldn't simply let those forces leave. Even if they managed to close the portal now, the massed Chitauri army would potentially be enough to overrun SHIELD's forces. 

Steve swallowed against the way his throat closed. 

"So," Bucky quipped, breaking the slightly tense silence, "looks like we go down fighting."

Bucky stood next to Steve at the glasteel window, his hands on the ship's controls. The rest of the Howling Commandos stood in a half circle behind them, staring out the window, themselves. Tony and Peggy were conspicuously absent, and Steve wasn't sure what they were up to.

Dumdum sniffed. "As if we would do anything else."

"Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori," Dernier quoted. "Tout le monde va se souvenir à nous."

Morita laughed, though there was little humour in the sound. "That about covers it. You ready for this, Monty?"

"I don't think 'ready' is a quality that could possibly apply to any of us, Jim," Falsworth replied, his voice dry, as always, "but we won't get anywhere by giving in to fear."

"Whose turn is it to babysit the ship?" Gabe wanted to know.

"Yours, 'cause you asked," Bucky joked.

Gabe scoffed. "I'd say Tony should do it, just so we know he comes through this," he retorted, "but I think we all know he'd never accept that."

"You're probably right on that score," Steve said on a sigh. "There's little use in waiting, so make your preparations, and send your letters home, if you have any. We go outship in half an hour."

Without another word, the Commandos dispersed. Steve stayed where he was. So did Bucky.

Silence reigned between them for a minute, before Bucky caught his eye with a meaningful expression. "Not gonna track down your two interested parties and kiss them goodbye? There'd just about be time for a quick tumble with one of them. Both might be a bit ambitious."

Steve fought not to blush. "Bucky!"

Bucky laughed at him, but said nothing more.

He tried not to give in, he did. But Steve couldn't let the moment pass. Bucky was right. There was every chance that one or all of them might get killed in this last Sisyphean battle.

Without a word, he left the helm, Bucky's amusement seeming to hound his footsteps, and went looking for Peggy. He knew where he stood with her, and it would be the easier conversation. Not easy by any means, considering the topic the needed to address, but easier.

It didn't take him long to find her. In fact, it was as though she'd been waiting for him. When he turned the corner in the corridor connecting the helm and the sleeping quarters, Peggy stood in the center of the path, her stance centered and the set of her shoulders telegraphing that she meant business. "Steve."

"Peg. We're getting this underway in under half an hour."

She nodded solemnly. "I'd suspected it would be soon. Are you alright?" 

"As much as I can be," Steve replied. "Let's talk somewhere a little more private."

She raised an eyebrow at him but conceded. "My quarters are closer."

They made it through the door, but no farther, before their hands were wandering. The door had just hissed closed behind them, when Peggy's hands landed on his chest. His own went to her waist and he ran them lightly up her flanks.

"Peggy," he knew his voice was serious, far moreso than their current position warranted, "Peg, we might not all make it through this. Do you want to..."

"Are you asking me if I want to have sex with you?" She asked, biting back a smile.

Steve took a steadying breath. "It might be our only chance," he said, "and I don't want this to be a regret either of us has."

"Not overly romantic." Peggy sniffed. "But accurate."

"When have you ever expected romance from me?" Steve asked her, then leaned in to kiss her deeply.

Peggy didn't miss a beat, responding immediately to the kiss and putting her hands on his hips to pull him toward her bunk. When she fetched up against the wall next to her bed, she opened the small drawer of personal items next to it and proved to Steve that she was better prepared for this than he was.

It didn't take her more than a few seconds to have his pants and underwear around his ankles, and the prophylactic on him.

"Come on, then," she encouraged him, looping her arms around his neck and staring into his eyes. "Show me a good time, Captain."


	9. Chapter 9

Bucky gave him a knowing smirk when they joined the others in the galley. That had become their tradition in the first war, a way to see everyone one last time before they threw themselves into a fight they might not come back from. A way to say goodbye without saying a word.

When Tony stumbled in after them looking entirely too mussed and disheveled, Bucky's eyebrows went up and he gave Steve a significant look.

They hadn't, but it was obvious Bucky was assuming the opposite. Steve carefully didn't acknowledge the look. He ignored the looks he got from several of the others, too. "Everyone know their positions?"

Tony huffed at him, seemingly oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. "I thought the plan was 'shoot the assholes and get to the portal'?"

Dumdum laughed, the sound slightly harsh. "Close enough."

Steve felt the smile tug at his lips. Tony really did fit in well, and Steve wanted to keep him. Adopt the man like a stray. It wasn't a feeling he could remember ever having, but he liked it. Shaking off the fondness after a moment, he set aside those feelings and the worries that went with them. It was time. "Right. Into the airlocks, then. Jim, you've got ship duty. Keep her -- and yourself -- in the sky."

Morita gave him a slightly mocking salute. "Aye, Cap."

"The rest of you jokers," Steve glanced around the room, meeting everyone's eyes briefly in turn, "into your battle suits and through the airlocks."

The team dispersed, but Tony hung back. "Something wrong, Tony?"

"Depends on how you define wrong," Tony replied, visibly screwing up his courage. "I did a lot of thinking last night."

"About?" Steve was fairly sure he knew, but didn't want to make any assumptions.

"We might not make it back from this mission. We all knew that when we accepted it. But that was before we knew a damned thing about one another." Tony stepped up into his personal space, and Steve had to resist the urge to put his hands on the man.

After a beat, Tony went on. "If we get through this, we need to have a long talk. You're sending me all kinds of conflicting signals, and it's driving me crazy."

"Tony?" Steve gave in to the urge to touch but stopped himself inches away, reaching out but letting Tony close the gap.

To his surprise, Tony did, taking Steve's hand and the last half-step in, to put them chest-to-chest. Before Steve could say a word, Tony's other hand came up to rest on his jaw as he went up on the balls of his feet, and then Tony was kissing him. 

It took Steve a few stunned seconds to get with the program and kiss back.

Tony didn't let it linger, though. He pulled back long before Steve would have been willing to, and gently pulled out of Steve's arms. "Come on. Get in your suit."

"Right. Battle." Still reeling a little, Steve all but stumbled over his own feet when he tried to get himself moving in the right direction. 

Tony sniggered at him, then hurried out of the room.

Putting his own battle suit on, his motions absent and automatic, Steve groped after his focus, which he'd only just regained after Peggy's very efficient approach to their tryst. Tony's actions had sent it scattering again.

That kind of distraction would get him killed, if he let it continue.

It took him several deep centering breaths, but he managed it, just as the airlock doors opened on the hard vacuum of space. Delicately sending himself through the opening, he rejoined his team, and they all took off as one toward the fight that awaited them. Tony lagged behind them a little, but he was getting better at reading them, their moods, and their intentions.

The Chitauri, naturally, spotted them the moment they came into sight, and the alarm went up.

That was all the warning that the team got before wave after wave of alien army was coming at them. They got separated into pairs of fighters fairly quickly, but their training held fast. Steve found himself fighting back to back with Bucky, and occasionally caught glimpses of Tony pairing off with Peggy through the melee. He could only hear the others over the radio. They were out of sight almost immediately.

He needed all of his skill with the new light-shield Tony had gifted him to keep from getting tagged, and he could tell Bucky was fighting just as hard.

"Go for their throats," Gabe gritted out over the radio some indeterminate amount of time later. "Shots there knock them out faster than anywhere else."

"Copy that," Bucky replied.

Slowly, accumulating minor injuries and suit damage, they tore their way through the army toward the portal. It was grinding grueling fighting of the worst kind. They had to take a few hits to get their kills in, and their enemies had enough numbers to eventually just wear them down. Steve had no idea how much time had passed, but he could tell Bucky was starting to falter slightly.

They were tiring.

If Bucky was starting to feel the strain, Steve knew, likely everyone else was as well. He himself wasn't exactly fresh, but he knew he could keep on for a while.

"Roll call!" Steve asked over his suit radio, suddenly needing to hear their voices. The comms had been silent for a long time as they all focused on not dying in the face of the masses of enemies. "Rogers, clear."

"Jones, clear." Gabe sounded slightly strained, but that was to be expected.

"Morita, engines slightly damaged, but operational."

Steve winced. He hadn't thought they'd get through this fight without damaging the _Glory_ any farther, but he'd hoped nevertheless.

"Carter, weapons systems suboptimal."

Some of the tension he hadn't thought he felt left him and Steve bit back a relieved sound.

"Barnes, clear."

"Falsworth, weapons damaged and main propulsion down."

Steve wanted to swear. It took effort to wait for the rest of the check ins.

"Dugan, clear. Covering Monty."

"Dernier, clear."

Ticking them off on his mental list, Steve let himself relax just slightly. "Iron Man?"

"Oh, am I included in your roll call, now?" Tony replied immediately, his voice amused despite the hint of weariness in it. "I'm clear, mother hen."

"With a bit of luck, we can get into range to close the portal in the next minute or so." Peggy added on the heels of Tony's statement.

"Do it. We need to stop them coming through, yesterday."

"Got it," Tony answered, and now he sounded almost sad. "Keep them off me."

Suddenly completely sure that this was related to that thing about his portal killer that Tony had been hiding, Steve considered flinging himself after them for one wild moment. "Close that portal and help us mop up, then, Iron Man."

Tony didn't reply, but Steve caught sight of his brightly lacquered armour breaking free of the melee just long enough to point something vaguely gun shaped at the portal.

Peggy followed him, keeping as close as she could while she fended off the Chitauri trying to kill them both. Morita helped, with fire from the _Glory_ 's guns, keeping the main mass of enemies distracted by forcing them to either dodge or die.

When Tony's portal killer finally fired, it let out a bright flash that left Steve wanting to rub at his eyes. He forced the urge away, and tried to keep fighting. That was far more difficult now that he couldn't see well. But, on the other hand, the intensity of the Chitauri attack was falling off rapidly.

Peggy almost got him killed, then. "Tony! Tony, answer me!"

Only silence came over the radio, and Steve felt ice shoot down his spine.

The Chitauri were dropping like puppets with their strings cut one by one, leaving them with less and less resistance with each passing moment, but there were enough still conscious to keep them all occupied.

Well, all of them but Peggy who swore viciously and blasted her way free of her assailants with even less compunction than before. "Tony! You dumb fuck! You'd best not be dead in that suit, you little shit, or I'll ream your ass myself!"

Dernier whistled, impressed.

Steve had to agree, it took a lot to make Peggy swear like that.

"Last time I heard her sound that pissed," Dumdum said, thoughtfully, "was when you got yourself captured and nearly killed trying to get Barnes back, Cap. We all got slabbed after that stunt."

One of the Chitauri pursuing her got in a lucky shot, then, and Steve couldn't stop himself. He'd heard about people seeing red, but it had never happened to him that he could recall.

Several shouts of dismay echoed in Steve's ears.

He found himself ignoring everything he heard entirely, and, since he could more or less see again, he ruthlessly took down the Chitauri keeping him and Bucky pinned down, not caring a whit about the damage he took in doing it. Getting free took him longer it had taken than Peggy and every second chafed now that she was injured -- possibly fatally -- and so was Tony.

Once he was free of that group, somehow it seemed like all the remaining fighters on the field decided to go after him. Steve ploughing through them bodily, leaving them either out of the fight or free pickings for his team. He didn't bother with them after he'd hit them once.

"Peggy!" He called, as he got close enough to see the damage to her suit.

It was hemorrhaging air, and he could see the power couplings for her weapons glowing red hot, where they had taken damage and then overheated. They had probably left behind burns on the skin of her arms and along her sides. Steve swallowed against the nausea that tried to overtake him.

Distantly he noted that the rest of the team had come up to guard them against any attacks from Chitauri that had escaped their final ferocious counterattack, and keep a close eye on the proceedings. Peggy was near and dear to all of them, the heart of the team, in many ways, and their honorary den mother, for all that she was hardly a maternal figure. Any threat to her would be summarily torn to shreds, at this point, Steve knew, with questions asked later, if at all.

Half convinced he'd truly lost her and fighting the tears that the thought was forcing up, it startled him when, after he turned her to face him, taking her suit into his arms, she stared straight at him and started trying to speak to him.

He leaned in quickly, putting the faceshield of his helmet against hers. "-- be fine," he heard, the words distorted by the pair of blastproof faceshields between them, "... the radio go-- back to the ship ... Get Tony."

It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough. He nodded at her, sure she was hiding her injuries behind her excellent façade as always, and handed her over to Gabe. "Get her back to the _Glory_ , pronto, and get her into the med bay. I'll grab Tony and follow. Buck, you're in charge for mop up."

Steve didn't bother listening for the ayes he got in response. Tony, with his opaque faceshield, was even less simple to assess. His battlesuit looked entirely dead, and there was no way for them to know whether he was still alive inside.

Steve worried at his lip as he approached, careful not to let himself hurry too much and send Tony flying out into space through a perfectly avoidable collision.

Once he'd snagged Tony, Steve didn't linger, sending himself after Gabe and Peggy. The trip back to the _Glory_ had never seemed so long. It felt like it stretched all the way back to Terra Firma, however many million miles distant, and Steve couldn't help but measure it in Tony's imagined laboring breaths and Peggy's gradual loss of environment.

It was such a relief to get into the airlock, and then through it into the ship, that Steve staggered on his feet and nearly lost his hold on Tony in the process. He wanted desperately to let himself lean against a wall for a minute, but the need to get Tony to the med bay and _out of his battlesuit_ drove Steve onward.

When he got to the med bay of the ship, with his arm tightly around Tony's armoured waist, he immediately spotted Gabe and Peggy. They had managed to remove the upper half of her armour, leaving her in nothing but her skin tight padding layer from the waist up. 

The padding was torn in a number of places and melted in a few others, and Steve winced at the wounds he could see through the layer of synthetics. Peggy's skin was littered in cuts and burns. None of them truly threatening, though Steve suspected many of them would scar without the use of Dr. Cho's cradle.

The tech they had aboard the _Glory_ wasn't designed to handle this kind of injury. The ship and her med bay had been designed and built in an era when the prevailing school of thought had been that soldiers fighting in space were most likely to die or come back with superficial wounds. That any injuries of middling intensity could be discounted, and that anything that might prove fatal on Earth was guaranteed to be a death sentence in space.

They'd seen that this was no longer the case, when Dr. Cho had gotten them fixed up. The selection of arcane and incomprehensible looking equipment she'd had at her disposal had been bewildering and a bit intimidating.

Now, though. Now Steve longed to have it aboard his ship. Peggy would pull through, that much he knew. But it would be a lot quicker and cleaner if they had access to Dr. Cho's equipment.

Laying Tony out on one of the med bay beds, Steve started looking for the catches on the battle suit armour. They were well hidden, clearly not meant to be easily found or accidentally triggered, and that made sense, given Tony's directive from Fury to hide his identity.

Which, Steve thought to himself, still hadn't truly been revealed. All Tony had given then was a first name. A nickname at that.

For now, though, he had other priorities. He needed to get that faceshield open, first of all, so that Tony didn't suffocate -- it was likely that his life support systems were down, along with everything else, and it had been nearly five minutes since his suit had been knocked out by his portal killer.

Sure enough, when Steve finally found the catches for the faceshield, tucked under the jawplating and carefully designed to be nearly invisible, Tony turned out to be unconscious.

The knowledge sent another thrill of alarm through him for all that he knew oxygen deprivation could easily cause that.

Gabe appeared at his side then and gently shouldered him out of the way. "We'll deal with this. You go make sure the mop up is going smoothly and call Fury. He sent us on this mission, and he can sure as hell help fix the aftermath."

Steve took a shuddering breath. "Right. Yeah. Okay."

Gabe's hand landed on his shoulder for a second, squeezing reassuringly. "They'll come through fine," he said, "you'll see. Both of them are stubborn cusses."

It always amazed him how perceptive his team could be when they wanted to. They tended to hide that aspect of themselves behind jokes and black humour.


	10. Chapter 10

Calling in to SHIELD HQ didn't get Steve the immediate results that he craved, but their response was prompt nevertheless.

The _Glory_ was directed to rendezvous with a larger SHIELD battle cruiser in the next sector -- it had a much better equipped medical facility and was far closer to them than HQ itself. Sub-director Hill also signed on long enough to promise that SHIELD would dispatch Dr. Cho with some specialized equipment, to rendezvous with them, en route.

Now that the portal was closed and the immediate threat dealt with, SHIELD suddenly found itself with more resources to apply to the problem. They had noticed that the Chitauri in the other farther sectors from the portal were also dropping like marionettes, much as the ones they'd fought had.

Their rendezvous with the nearby cruiser, the _Formidable_ , wouldn't take long for them to reach. They were only hours away. The knowledge soothed Steve's slightly ragged nerves a bit. Peggy was recovering well, but Tony was still unconscious, and they didn't know why.

It had sounded to Steve like Dr. Cho had some idea what was wrong and that was why she was rushing out to meet them with special equipment. The guess had chafed at him somewhat, with the way it reeked of more secrets kept, but Steve had to keep his focus on getting his teammates to assistance, or he might go mad.

His thoughts had a tendency to get tangled up in themselves when he was left to his own devices.

Bucky had always been the one to straighten him out, Before. Before the first war. Before he'd met Peggy. Before they'd gotten slabbed. Over the time he'd known her, Peggy had gotten progressively better at it, the longer she'd known him, until she'd been doing it more often than Bucky.

When he'd realised that, it had rocked Steve.

That had been the first time he'd thought he might love her a little, and he'd had to sit down to try to untangle his fondness for her, for Bucky, and how well both of them could read him. Had to try to work out what that meant for him and for what he felt about the two of them.

Peggy had figured him out within a few hours and asked him about it.

Steve suppressed the amusement that memory brought up. She hadn't believed him when he'd bluntly told her he was falling for her, and had maintained that position adamantly until just recently.

In retrospect, that was probably not because she didn't feel the same, but more because she wanted to keep him and the team close, as she'd told him repeatedly.

"You look like smoke's gonna start pouring out your ears, with how hard you're thinking," Bucky told him, stepping up beside him.

"Yeah?" Steve huffed at his friend. "At least I'm making progress."

"Toward what?" Bucky laughed. "Thought you'd already worked out where you stood with your beau and your belle."

"She'll not thank you for the comparison, you know."

"Why do you think I made sure she wouldn't hear? And don't dodge the question."

Steve ran his hands through his hair. "If I knew the answer, I'd have reached my goal, wouldn't I?"

\------ 

When they got to the rendezvous, they'd been invited to put their little craft into one of the _Formidable_ 's cargo bays, for convenience's sake. Apparently Dr. Cho wanted to check them all over, and that meant they needed to find a place to stow the rather battered _Glory_ , since the _Formidable_ was running a skeleton crew, herself. The rest of her crew was helping mop up the leftover Chitauri in other sectors, while the ship had been diverted to pick them up. The _Formidable_ would be returning to her scheduled patrol route the moment they were aboard.

They'd been met at the _Glory_ 's airlocks by the full complement of medical staff currently aboard, and they'd snatched Tony and Peggy out of the crew's arms. 

Steve had felt a bit bereft and directionless watching them rush away to start triaging wounds.

Morita had slapped him on the shoulder and offered a distraction on the form of finding out where their temporary quarters would be, while they waited for the medics to realise that they'd left without giving anyone directions to the _Formidable_ 's med bay.

The knowledge that Peggy and Tony would be fine, that they would be well cared for until Dr. Cho could get to them, was a weight lifted off his shoulders that left him feeling like he might float away.

Steve closed his eyes briefly as he let the Commandos steer him out of the cargo bay the _Glory_ rested in, nursing her own wounds, and took a moment to thank all the stars in the sky that he hadn't lost two of the people dearest to him.

\------

In the end, it took a full six hour shift for the medical staff of the _Formidable_ to get around to checking them over. They found a few bumps and bruises on everyone, and determined that Morita also had lightly sprained his shoulder. The team was summarily patched up and dismissed to quarters, after that, with instructions to rest and admonitions to take the medications they'd been handed.

Not one of them had been able to sleep, though. They'd congregated in Steve's room, by some unspoken agreement, arranging themselves on his floor with a deck of cards that Dernier had produced out of who knew what little pocket and played poker until their eyes had finally drooped shut.

After that first night aboard a foreign ship, once they'd slept and acclimated a little, things had finally equalized enough for them to find their collective balance. Their recovery after that had been quick. Morita's sprain was checked on possibly more often than strictly necessary, but none of them minded, much. They were more interested in how Tony and Peggy were doing.

The two of them recovered a lot more slowly, their injuries substantially more severe than those the rest of their little crew had suffered.

It took almost three weeks for Dr. Cho to declare Peggy fully recovered, because apparently her new injuries had aggravated the first set she'd gotten. Her concussion and other light injuries hadn't fully healed before the final battle they'd gotten into.

It took nearly a month for Dr. Cho to let Tony out of her sight.

He'd tried to escape three times in the first two days after he'd recovered enough to stand, after which, Dr. Cho had threatened to tie him down. Tony, not believing the threat was a real one, had tried again after that.

In the interim Steve and the rest of the Commandos checked over the _Glory_ and did what they could to fix her up, with the help of the _Formidable_ 's mechanics, but there was only so much that could be done. The damage to her hull was more extensive than any of them -- except perhaps Tony -- had realised, and hull plates for that model of ship simply weren't being manufactured anymore. It would be more expensive to fix her up properly than to simply scrap her and replace her with a more modern ship.

That had saddened Steve somehow. For all that he had to admit that Tony was right, and the _Glory_ definitely was a shadow of what she'd been at her christening, Steve found himself reluctant to just give her up. A large part of him was insisting that they keep the ship and ask Tony what he could do to get her back in the sky.

The next time Steve had seen Tony, just after he'd come to his conclusions about the _Glory_ , he'd had to stay out of Tony's room for a good five minutes until he could get his expression under control. Tony wouldn't have been very pleased with him, if Steve had walked in and burst out laughing until his side split at the very grumpy put out expression Tony wore. Being restrained did _not_ sit well with a man like Tony, and it showed.

Once Peggy had been mobile enough, Steve had pulled her into a tight hug, and then suggested that she talk to Tony about his escape attempts.

He hadn't witnessed the discussion, but the results had been clear. Albeit reluctantly, Tony had submitted to Dr. Cho's insistence that he stay put. Peggy had rewarded him by handing him his design tablet and deputised Steve to sit with him.

That, at least, had the side effect of ensuring that they were all in the same room at the same time more than once over the course of Tony's recovery.

Tony, being who he was, hadn't waited long to broach the topic of their 'relationship', such as it was, more or less demanding answers from them both.

"So, spill," he'd said, eyeing them both a bit warily, "what the hell is the deal, here? When I got aboard, everyone was more or less assuming you two were an item. It was obvious to anyone with eyes that you were, if they cared to look. So what the hell are you doing trying to throw hints at me, Steve? And you're no better, Carter, with the way you literally carried me off to bed that one time."

They'd exchanged a look and laughed. "The answer to that, Tony," Peggy'd told him, "is simple. We talked about it and decided that, since we don't want to give each other up but think you're worth the trouble, we'd wait and see whether we all got out of that mission alive."

She'd stopped, and Steve had picked up the thread. "If we did, we'd decided to ask you if you were interested in joining us." Tony had gaped at them, stunned speechless. Steve had taken a moment to enjoy that. He'd known Tony didn't wear that look often. After a beat he'd added, "And we weren't an item until that final fight at the portal, either. I knew I loved Peggy, and suspected she felt the same, but regulations forbid it."

Peggy gave him a slightly exasperated look. "They still do, technically. You just care even less about that than you did before."

"Fury isn't going to break us up after that," Steve pointed out. "And I think if he tried, the rest of the team would simply quit."

Tony made a sound like he wanted to speak but had no idea how to phrase his sentence.

Steve caught Tony's eyes. "Think about it, and let us know what you want. Offer's open."

Peggy rolled her eyes at him. "Not an ounce of romance in you."

"I've heard no complaints so far." Steve grinned back at her, pleased with himself and knowing that he probably looked very smug.

"Oh for goodness' sake." 

He would have continued teasing her, but Peggy leaned in and shut him up with a kiss. It started out chaste, on his part, but she pushed for more without a bit of shame in her bearing.

That ability to make a decision and just go for it was one of the things about her that Steve adored. He let her direct the kiss, a low groan boiling up out of the pit of his stomach, putting his hands on her waist and not bothering to hide how it affected him.

Tony whined at them after a few seconds, sounding almost pained. "Jesus fuck, get a room. Don't tease me like that."

Steve broke the kiss and leaned his forehead against Peggy's, laughing. "Consider it a preview," he suggested, and freed his hands long enough to subtly adjust himself in his pants.

"Come on, Steve," Peggy said, and hauled him up out of his chair. "It takes a lot more than that to keep me satisfied and if you don't deliver, I might have to trade you in for a new model."


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus we come to the end of this little journey. I've had a blast chatting with y'all in the comments, and I hope this *ahem* satisfies those of you who were looking forward to the ending.
> 
> 'Ware, readers, there be smut ahead. ;)

Steve was careful not to hint too much around Tony after that, until Tony was recovered enough that Dr. Cho let him leave the med bay. He didn't want to torture Tony too much, after all. He'd been in a similar position before, those times he'd been hurt while he'd still been pining after Peggy.

Peggy wasn't as held back.

She'd made suggestive remarks anytime she felt like it, and strongly implied that she definitely wanted to add Tony in to the collection she joked about starting. Repeatedly.

Looking back, Steve thought she might have been trying to make sure Tony knew they hadn't changed their minds or gotten some other crazy idea into his head.

Now that Tony was free to come and go as he pleased again, he'd vanished into his makeshift workshop on the _Glory_ , and Steve was left debating whether to follow him there.

"Steve?" Peggy's voice pulled him back out of his thoughts and back into the present.

"Yeah?" He turned to face her in his seat. He'd ensconced himself in the small common room near their temporary quarters on the _Formidable_ with some mission reports he still needed to write, and ended up losing himself in his thoughts instead.

"You're not getting anywhere are you," Peggy guessed shrewdly, a quirk of her lips telling him she was feeling fond and amused.

"Not really," Steve admitted. "Keep getting distracted."

Peggy stepped over to him and boldly arranged herself in his lap. "By Tony?" She asked as her hands climbed up his neck to twine in his hair.

"By the way he's hiding," he answered, sliding his own hands up her legs until they snagged on her hips and stayed there and leaning in to tuck his nose into the hollow of her collarbone. The light scent of her soap was strangely settling. It had never once changed in all the time he'd known her, and though that was both astonishing and baffling considering what they'd been through, Steve kind of loved it.

Peggy sniffed and pulled back slowly. "So let's pry him out. He'll listen to us. Might not give anyone else the time of day, but he respects you, and I'm fairly sure he's also head over heels."

Suddenly thankful that they'd more or less discussed the boundaries of their relationship while Tony had still been confined to bed, albeit obliquely, Steve let her go. "Are you planning what I think you are," he asked, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice.

"Probably," she admitted easily. "I've been wanting to find out if his boasting about how good he is in bed is justified."

She knew he never had been able to resist a challenge, and that was a fun gauntlet to pick up.

He himself hadn't had much experience to speak of when he'd finally convinced Peggy to have sex with him, but he'd been learning. The 'lessons' had been their own reward, really. There hadn't been many, since Peggy had only recently been declared fit, but Steve had treasured and looked forward to each one.

The thought that they could finally have some fun with Tony as well was an exciting one.

"Let's do it," he agreed, shoving aside the pile of reports he hadn't been able to focus on anyway.

Peggy laughed at his eagerness, but didn't say a word against it. "Think we can convince him to have a tumble this early in the shift? He's probably only just settled down to work."

"You're a force of nature," Steve told her, enjoying the bright smile he got in return, "I know you'll succeed."

The walk out to the cargo bay the _Glory_ sat in was a comparatively long one, but it passed in what felt like mere seconds. When he caught sight of the ship, the first thing that Steve noticed was the way her airlock doors and gangway stood wide open. Since the _Glory_ was in a pressurized cargo bay, there was no need to cycle the airlocks every time they entered or left, and Tony clearly didn't feel like bothering.

No one else frequented the tiny craft, now that they had been assigned quarters on the much larger _Formidable_. Steve was suddenly glad of that. They would at least have privacy for what they were about to attempt.

He followed Peggy up the gangway and into the ship, hitting the switch to close the door behind them. Steve definitely didn't want to be interrupted, and suspected Peggy would have agreed if he'd asked her.

The two of them made their way through the familiar, but eerily quiet, corridors of the _Glory_ , only pausing in front of the door of Tony's makeshift workshop. They could hear the muffled noises that meant Tony was inside and building. It was a welcome flicker of life in a ship that felt a bit too silent.

"Now or never, Rogers," Peggy prodded at him with a sideways glance and half-smile.

"Definitely now," Steve told her and opened the door.

Peggy stepped through, taking charge of the situation as easily as breathing. Steve let her. She would be better at it than he would, and he knew it. This was not the time to allow for miscommunications; if they started out on the wrong foot, it would be very difficult to recover.

Tony didn't look up, engrossed in whatever he was doing. It looked to Steve like it might be repairs to the red-and-gold lacquered battlesuit he wore so often.

Peggy moved to stand in front of him. "Tony."

Startled, Tony looked up, and almost dropped his soldering iron to the floor with a curse. "Shit," he grumbled. "Are you _trying_ to give me a heart attack?"

"Hardly," Steve put in, and put himself behind Peggy and to her left. "We'd prefer to keep you around."

"In fact," Peggy reached out to turn Tony's head with a knuckle under his chin -- a move that left him the option of refusing but very clearly telegraphed what she wanted -- and leaned in. When she was nose-to-nose with him, she went on, "We thought you might be interested in taking things one step farther, now that you're free of that bunk in the med bay."

"Uh," Tony stared at her for a moment before he caught up fully. "What? Here?"

"Well, if you're against it," Steve told him, "we won't force the issue, but none of our bunks are big enough for three. Even two is pushing it."

Tony snorted. "Granted, but this place isn't very comfortable either."

"Maybe not," Peggy dropped a kiss on his cheek and leaned away again, "but at least we won't be banging our knees or elbows against things. You in or out, Tony?"

"What the hell," he gave in with a bemused expression, "why not. But next time we're doing this in an actual bed."

"You volunteering yours?" Peggy pulled him in close, putting her hands on his waist. "We don't exactly have one of our own."

That time Tony went willingly, turning off his tools automatically and running his hands up Peggy's arms. "Maybe. But I have to warn you, I come under a lot of scrutiny from the press. If you do come back to my place, it'll probably make the tabloids."

"We can deal with that if and when it becomes a problem," Steve decided, and dared to step up behind Tony, putting his hands on Tony's back and running them down from the nape of Tony's neck to his butt.

Tony almost seemed to melt into the caress, making Steve a little bolder. Leaning in to tentatively kiss his way up Tony's neck got him a pleased sigh of sound.

Peggy took advantage of that to put her hands under Tony's shirt and get her hands on bare skin. Tony approved of the touch. He reached back to grab a handful of his shirt and pull it up over his head. When he was free of the fabric, Peggy went back to her explorations, and leaned in again to kiss Tony properly.

While they leisurely explored each other, Steve let his hands wander up Tony's sides and around to his chest, not willing to be left out. He and Peggy got in one another's way a few times, but that didn't bother either of them at all.

"Mm," Tony broke the silence and his kiss with Peggy after a couple of pleasant minutes. "Steve, shirt off."

"If you keep on like this," Peggy put in, "I'm going to start feeling left out."

Tony laughed at her rather obvious lie. "You had him to yourself for how many years and didn't take advantage? It's my turn." 

"We were on ice for a lot of those years," she pointed out, "and actively at war with the Chitauri for the majority of the rest."

"You also insisted that we not risk it every time I asked," Steve reminded her mildly.

"That explains a lot," Tony said and turned in their arms to face Steve. "But I really don't care right now. Less talking, more sex."

The way Tony was pressed against him, Steve could feel his hard cock pinned between their bodies and the small twitches of Tony's hips as he unconsciously rubbed himself off on the fabric of Steve's pants.

Suddenly _needing_ to feel skin on skin in a way he hadn't before, Steve followed Tony's demand and pulled his own shirt over his head. Peggy's presence didn't fade out of his awareness -- he knew it never would -- but his focus was on Tony now, and he knew the others could see that.

An idea struck him, then, and Steve bit his lip to keep from groaning at nothing more than the mental image. "Peggy?"

She leaned against Tony's back and met Steve's eyes. "Hmmm?"

"I vote we get Tony out of the rest of his clothes and show him why 'turns' are overrated."

Peggy's glee was almost palpable. "What's the plan?"

"We can both take our 'turns' together. Lay him out so we can both have our fun. Once we have him horizontal, we can keep him occupied at both ends."

Tony's head fell forward to rest on Steve's shoulder and he took a shuddering breath. "That sounds ridiculously hot," he asked, "but don't I get a say in this?"

"Are you objecting?" Steve ran his hands down Tony's back again, starting at the points of Tony's shoulderblades and lingering in the hollow above his hips.

"Not as such?"

"Take your pants off, then," Peggy told him, "and if you have any blankets down here, get them."

Steve had to force his hands open; he didn't want to let go.

Peggy noticed immediately, to his relief, and stepped in close to him as Tony did as she'd asked. Steve wrapped his arms around her waist, rucking up her shirt and remapping her skin, letting his fingers linger over the tiny ridges that would have scarred without treatment, and the dimples where her back met her butt. Her hands traced lines over his chest and down to his pants, before she deftly undid the closures on them and pushed them off Steve's hips.

Tony stared for a beat, taking in the sight, then grabbed for a few thin shop blankets and tossed them on his workbench. That done, he grabbed their shirts off the floor and dropped them over the back of his chair. They were no longer clean, by any means, but at least they wouldn't end up too rumpled. Tony's pants joined their shirts a few seconds later.

When he offered the blankets to Peggy, she looked him up and down once, letting her eyes linger. "Not bad," she told him.

"Tennis is great for keeping fit," Tony told her with a nearly straight face, "but I'll never look like Steve."

Steve gave him a sardonic look. "I didn't always look like this either. And anyway, that doesn't matter to me."

"Nor me," Peggy agreed. "Just because Steve has shoulders broad enough to carry the world doesn't mean you must, too. You're very nicely proportioned, as well, Tony."

Tony made a disbelieving sound, but didn't pursue the point. "You going to take your clothes off, too, Peggy? Going to let me see you properly?"

Rather than answer verbally, she pulled out of Steve's grip and stepped over to put herself in arms' reach of the chair and added her shirt to the growing pile of clothes. It left her in her very practical bra, and Tony nodded encouragingly. "That's a good first step."

Steve gave in to the impulse to touch, and moved in close, returning the favor and dropping Peggy's trousers to the floor to puddle around her ankles.

Tony, daring to follow suit, reached for her underwear as she pulled the elastic fabric of her bra off over her head. He let his eyes linger on her, taking in her ample curves and pert nipples. 

Now that she was bared -- Steve groaned -- he could smell her arousal.

Tony put his hands on her waist and pulled her in for a kiss. While he kept her mouth occupied, Tony ran his hands over her skin, exploring and making pleased sounds anytime he found sensitive points that made Peggy squirm.

The sight of the squirms and the sounds Tony was making were starting to get to Steve, too.

Deciding he'd had enough of the foreplay, he took the forgotten blankets and spread them in the largest open space on the workshop floor. It wouldn't be comfortable, by any means, but they wouldn't all fit in the chair and trying to use a worktable was just as bad as the floor.

"So," Tony said, breaking the kiss at length, "I hope you brought the requisite supplies, because I haven't got any here."

Steve dug in the pocket of Peggy's discarded pants, sure of what he'd find, then handed Tony a wrapped condom and held up a couple more. "Good enough?"

Tony eyed him. "Well if you intend to do more than anything involving hands or mouths with me, it'll require some lube."

"Are you saying that there's nothing body safe in here?" Peggy asked, her fingers tweaking at Tony's nipple and getting a surprised yelp in reply.

"That's exactly what I'm saying." Tony got out after a beat.

"Damn." Peggy made a face. "Well, I'm not leaving to find some."

"We can work around that," Steve agreed. "Feel like riding him, Peggy?"

She considered the suggestion. "And what about you?"

"Tony?" Steve caught the man's eyes.

"Shut up and put your dick in my mouth," Tony rolled his eyes and pulled away from Peggy long enough to settle himself on the blanket on his back. "You talk too damn much for someone who was looking so eager to get to the action a second ago."

Laughing at him, Steve knelt over him, straddling Tony's waist, then ran his hands over Tony's shoulders and down his well-muscled arms. "I've been looking forward to this for a while. But there's no reason not to do this properly," he said, and picked up one of Tony's hands, pressing into the muscles of Tony's palm and getting a surprisingly erotic groan out of Tony in response.

Tony allowed him to keep his grip on that hand, and brought his other up to trace the features of Steve's face.

They let the moment stretch out, neither of them feeling the need to break it, until Peggy cleared her threat pointedly. "What happened to that action you mentioned?"

Jolted back into action, Steve grabbed for his pants and balled them up into a reasonable approximation of a pillow, then hauled Tony up enough to shove it into place behind Tony's head. He'd done his homework in the time Tony had been recouperating. He might never have tried this before, but he knew roughly how it should work, and that being flat on his back would be very uncomfortable for Tony.

As he finished the movement, Peggy shifted to lean against his back, draping her arms over his shoulders and leaving a trail of nips up the back of his neck that made him bite his lip and squirm. "Peggy," he started, the words cutting off in a quiet whine when she caught his skin between her teeth and held it.

"Shit," Tony's breath hitched audibly halfway through the word, "you two are gonna be the death of me. C'mere, Rogers."

Tony's hands went around his hips, and urged him closer. Steve shuffled forward without standing, ignoring the way the blankets under him bunched up around his knees in favor of peeling himself away from Peggy and the soft press of her breasts against his shoulder blades, until his knees were tucked into Tony's armpits. Ever the perfectionist, Tony wasn't about to allow for inefficiency, though. He brought his hands up and trailed them up the insides of Steve's thighs, making him swear, then farther, until he could take two handfuls of Steve's ass. Having accomplished that, he pulled, forcing Steve to decide whether to attempt to resist.

It took all of an instant for him to decide he didn't want to, and let Tony draw him in close until the warm damp air of his exhalations was washing over Steve's cock and making it twitch. Steve couldn't help the way he curled forward around the sensation. "Tony! Oh god."

Peggy sniggered at him. "If I didn't know any better, Steve," she told him with an amused smile audible in her voice, "I'd think you were a virgin, the way you're about to go off. Just as well you've got more than one round in you."

Steve would have turned to glare at her, if Tony hadn't laughed outright and leaned up to take the head of his cock into his mouth. The sensation of tight warmth sent another strong shudder up his spine, and made his hips jerk. This was almost as good as being buried deep in Peggy, but somehow more varied. The velvet softness was the same, but the slight jolts of sharp almost-pain from Tony's teeth and the press of Tony's tongue were enough to make Steve groan loudly.

He heard the foil packet tear open in Peggy's hands, and then Tony jolted under him. Steve laughed at him, knowing he sounded about as breathless as he felt. "Got him ready, Peggy?" He asked, just to draw Tony's attention to the things Peggy was doing.

"Mm," Peggy replied, sounding quite pleased, then teased him, in the next breath. "You know, I thought you had a pretty cock, the first time I saw it, but this might be even better."

She leaned in to lick a wet stripe up the side of his neck, just to make him cringe away from the slick touch and laugh, then sighed in that way he'd learned to associate with sinking slowly inside her. "Peggy," he ground out her name, then reached back to swat at her butt in an attempt at revenge.

Tony stopped that handily. He groaned around his mouthful, and Steve couldn't stop his back from arching, pushing his cock deeper into that overwhelming wet warmth until he bumped into the back of Tony's threat and stopped short, feeling his breath come fast. The vibrations of Tony's voice had felt like they tingled all the way up his spine to lodge at the base of his skull and build there.

"Make him come, Tony," Peggy suggested, and Steve felt her start moving, one of her hands on his shoulder as she raised herself up and paused there, keeping herself suspended over Tony in a way that had to feel amazing.

"Won't take much," Steve admitted, twisting at the waist until he could haul her in close enough for a kiss. It was awkward, and messy, and more teeth than lips or tongue, but it was great anyway.

His admission seemed to galvanize Tony, though. The hot wet mouth on him went demanding, and made him break the kiss with a gasp so that he could lean back enough to brace his hands against the blanket-covered floor with a hiss.

Steve had just enough time to see Tony's eyes go hot before his head fell back and Peggy took advantage of the pose to leave a hickey on the side of his neck, just below his ear. She had to keep her movements to shallow rolls of her hips to pull it off, but Steve knew she didn't mind that at all.

Tony's hands, which Steve hadn't noticed for a while, suddenly landed on his butt and spread him wide. The sudden vulnerability broke what control he had left, and he came hard. His hands clenched around the blankets where they were braced against the floor; his jaw clenched; his eyes fell shut. Time seemed to grind to a halt.

When he came back to himself, Tony was licking him clean with apparent gusto as Peggy watched and kept moving.

"He tastes as good as he smells, doesn't he?" Peggy asked Tony.

She got a hoarse wordless affirmative that made Steve wince away from Tony's mouth, oversensitive. Tony tried to keep him from pulling back, but Steve wasn't about to be deterred. He forced himself to his feet, wavered for a moment, then took the few short steps to settle himself behind Peggy, instead.

On his knees behind her, his legs brushing against Tony's and his chest against her back, Steve let his hands wander, starting at her knees and trailing higher with each movement she made. Tony's voice came out as a harsh rasp at the sight. "He does," Tony gritted out through his teeth, "but I'll bet you do too."

Peggy's head fell back when Steve's hands cupped her breasts, and she let it rest on Steve's shoulder as he kneaded them the way she liked. Her hands fell to Tony's waist, then left scratches that went nearly all the way down to point where they were joined. Rather than stop there, though, Peggy set one hand between her legs, rubbing at that sensitive point she'd so recently taught Steve about. 

He dropped a kiss on her neck and offered, "let me handle that."

Tony swore, but Peggy nodded weakly, apparently beyond words. Or just saving her breath for moving.

Following through immediately, Steve reached down with one hand and used the leverage he had to try to get Peggy to come. It seemed to happen very quickly; what felt like mere instants after he'd set his hand so that she could rub off against it as she thrust against Tony, she made a sound like she'd been sucker punched and came with a wordless cry. 

That -- and perhaps the feeling of Steve's fingers brushing against his cock as he moved -- set Tony off, and he came, too, arching his back with a triumphant hiss.

It took the pair of them a while to come down off the high, and Steve spent it enjoying the feeling of skin on skin, reveling in the contact he hadn't ever expected he'd get to have.

The way the first war had ended for them, Steve had fully expected not to wake up again. He hadn't realised that until he had woken, and even then it had been subconscious. Afterwards, he'd adjusted to the idea that he was stuck right back in the same status quo; Peggy loved him but wouldn't bend the rules; Bucky was at his side but not interested in quite the same way Steve had been for a long time. But then, Steve bit back the smile. Then Tony had fallen into their lives and turned everything on its head.

Repeatedly.

Sure, at the time Steve hadn't appreciated that the same way he did now. But he found himself damned glad of it now. 

"So," Tony broke the silence, stretching languidly, "that was fun. What now?"

"Now," Peggy told him firmly, "we're all going to get some sleep, and we'll see what needs doing in the morning."

"Sleep sounds nice," Steve agreed, "and I think the first thing to do will be to find a place where we can do that together."

The comment got him amused huffs from both his lovers.

"The Captain has a point," Tony told Peggy.

"I suppose he does." She smiled, and it that was that very pleased quirk of her lips that Steve loved. "For now our separate bunks will have to do, though."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art: "Gonna carry him off to bed, Carter?"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12759771) by [mekare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mekare/pseuds/mekare)




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